The EVOO Brand Rachael Ray Swears By
Rachael Ray fans know she loves cooking with extra-virgin olive oil, or EVOO for short. It appears in almost every one of her recipes, from simple pasta dishes to antipasto to fancy grilled cheese.
In fact, the celebrity chef is responsible for the shorthand name, which is pronounced letter by letter — "E-V-O-O." "It's a mouthful to say 'extra-virgin olive oil' over and over again," Ray wrote in an email to Mercury News in 2007. That same year, the catchphrase was added to the Oxford American College Dictionary. Considering the fact that Ray has built her brand on sharing time-saving recipes with fans — her cooking show "30-Minute Meals" ran for 30 seasons — it's pretty fitting that the term's origin story, too, focuses on saving time.
Beyond popularizing the term "EVOO," Ray has also shared plenty of insight into how she chooses the right types of EVOO for all of her recipes.
Rachael Ray recommends La Boîte — for some jobs
For recipes that call for cooking EVOO at high temperatures, Rachael Ray suggests using olive oils that share a visual quality. "If you can see through olive oil, including mine, you can bring it to a high enough cooking temperature that you can make cutlets" she said in 2020 (via the "Rachael Ray Show"). The chef's Rachael Ray-branded olive oil retails for $9.99 for a 17-ounce bottle at Walmart.
But for recipes that call for EVOO that isn't being cooked at high temperatures, Ray suggests using a "fancy" olive oil. "If you're finishing something or making a salad dressing or dipping bread," Ray said (via the "Rachael Ray Show" website), "you use olive oil that you keep in a dark container to protect it from light and it's literally green and fruity and smells bitter and very fragrant."
During one "Rachael Ray Show" segment, the chef referred to a bottle of La Boîte Koroneiki Olive Oil as "super duper EVOO" (via Twitter). At $25 for a 750-milliliter bottle, this option was created with the help of chef Eric Ripert and is pricier than Ray's brand of EVOO. Ray isn't the only chef to suggest keeping two types of olive oil in your pantry — David Lebovitz swears by the trick, too.