Bottle of olive oil surrounded by olives - Olive Oil Pour Spouts Preventing Rancid Olive Oil

What is the best way to keep olive oil from being oxidized or rancid?

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When running a food service, you’re always working against the clock. You have to get orders out in a timely fashion or else you risk loosing customers. At the same time, you have to move food products quickly enough so that they don’t spoil. For every item in your inventory, the rate of spoilage and the associated risks are different, and you have to learn tips and tricks for all of it.

When it comes to olive oil — an essential in many kitchens — the biggest risk is that it will oxidize and turn rancid. How do you prevent that?

There are two things you need to know: proper storage and proper usage. You’ll find explanations of both below.

Safe Storage & Olive Oil Pour Spouts

The easiest way to protect your olive oil and keep it pristine for long periods of time is to implement practices of safe storage.

First and foremost, keep it sealed tightly. The easiest way for olive oil to turn rancid is through exposure to oxygen. Oxygen in the air reacts chemically with olive oil and will spoil the oil over time. If your oil bottle is sealed with a screw cap, that cuts off the flow of air to the bottle, and the oil will keep much longer.

On a similar note, it’s important to store your olive oil in an appropriate bottle. You want to use nonreactive materials. Glass is the mostPouring olive oil in small glass bowl - Olive Oil Pour Spouts Preventing Rancid Olive Oil common choice because it doesn’t react with olive oil at all. Ceramic and porcelain containers are also safe. Stainless steel can work too, but be sure that it is in fact stainless.

Most metal containers are no good, as the metals react with the oil and spoil it faster. Plastic bottles are suboptimal too, as the oil can dissolve and absorb PVCs in the plastics.

Lastly, store your oil in a dark, cool place. Cellar temperatures are ideal; there’s no need to freeze olive oil. Higher temperatures speed up chemical reactions and shorten the oil’s shelf life. Similarly, light can add energy to the bottle and accelerate the oxidation and degradation of the oil.

Safe Usage

Of course, you buy the oil to use it. It can’t just sit on a shelf forever. How do you safely use olive oil to prevent spoilage?

You follow as many of the above principles as possible. When it’s not in use, keep it in proper storage. Even when it is in use, stick with glass or other nonreactive bottles.

Most importantly, you want to minimize how much oxygen can get into the bottle. For that, the easiest solution is to use sealing olive oil pour spouts. In most cases, sealing pour spouts are also measured pour spouts. How do measured pour spouts work?

They have valves built into them that prevent air from making its way into the bottle. So, you can pour out oil as needed, and even though you have an open spout, air is not readily flowing back into the bottle, and you reduce the risk of oxidation.

If you want pour spouts that help you serve olive oil and keep it from turning rancid, look no further than Anytime Olive Oil & Wood Products. Contact us today to see all of your options and find the perfect tools that protect your olive oil.

women putting groceries in refrigerator - Olive Oil Pour Spouts Can Olive Oil Be Refrigerated?

Can Olive Oil Be Refrigerated?

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Disadvantages of refrigerating olive oil

The most noticeable drawback of chilled olive oil is that it congeals into a thick, turgid substance. The oil is unsuitable for meals like salads in this crystallized state because it won’t drip.

Olive oil is a liquid at room temperature, which is seldom as warm as the human mouth in most countries. This means when frozen olive oil enters a human’s mouth, it is bound to warm up and turns into liquid. Unfortunately, the warming process is uneven and can result in an unpleasant taste and, most likely, an unhappy culinary experience.

Many studies strongly suggest that repeatedly removing and returning olive oil to a refrigerator stresses the oil and shortens its shelf life. This is due to repeated oxidation (when oxygen in the air mixes with fatty molecules, causing the oil to lose its cohesion, consistency, and flavor).

Since using it congealed isn’t preferred, a final disadvantage of refrigerating olive oil is that you must wait for the oil to warm up. No one wants to wait around for their olive oil to warm up.

How to properly store olive oil

With refrigerating your olive oil not an option, what’s the best way to store olive oil? We’ve got a few recommendations…

  • To help prevent spoilage, we recommend storing your olive oil where it’s dark and in a well-sealed container. Olive oil and oxygen don’trow of olive oils - Olive Oil Pour Spouts Can Olive Oil Be Refrigerated? mix well together. On top of that, a poorly sealed container could potentially allow for bugs and other unwanted substances to get into your olive oil.
  • Store olive oil where it is dry, along with air, moisture is the oil’s worst enemy. As water hydrolyses its fatty molecules, turning them into horrid-looking clumps of goop that neither you nor any dinner companions would willingly eat.

In brief, store olive oil in a cold, dry cupboard in a sealed container. For best results, we recommend using a pour spout to seal the container, especially one with a separate intake for air and a flap to keep the tap closed when oil isn’t pouring out of it. Contact us for more information on olive oil pour spouts!

Refrigerating olive oil myth

There is a persistent rumor that refrigerating olive oil will help you tell whether you have authentic olive oil. This in fact isn’t true.

Manufacturers of genuine olive oil produce liquids with different chemical compositions. Each composition acts differently when refrigerated. Thus, there isn’t a way to use refrigeration to distinguish that quality of olive oil.

In short, should you refrigerate olive oil?

While it’s completely up to you, we highly recommend not refrigerating your olive oil. When stored in fridge-cold temperatures, olive oil forms crystals and turns solid. In this hardened state, olive oil is difficult to pour out of an open-topped container and even impossible to use out of a pour spout.