Throw Your Extra-Virgin Olive Oil Away Immediately If You Notice This
If you're a pro home cook, you should be keeping two olive oils in your kitchen. One is for cooking, and the other is to finish dishes you don't need to cook, like salads. One great option for your fancier olive oil is extra-virgin olive oil, and yes, there is a difference between extra-virgin olive oil and regular olive oil. If you're going to have extra-virgin olive oil on hand, it's important to learn to tell when it's spoiled.
When food goes bad, there's often a nasty smell. The best way to tell if your extra-virgin olive oil has gone bad is also by its smell, but not the way you might guess. According to The Daily Meal, if your extra-virgin olive oil smells far too sweet, you need to throw it away. The smell isn't a good sweet — it's more like Elmer's glue or fermenting fruit.
California Olive Ranch recommends finishing off each bottle of extra-virgin olive oil within three to six months. They put a harvest date on their bottles, and for other brands, you should look for the "best by" date.
How to properly store your extra-virgin olive oil
It's always disappointing to have to throw away food, especially when it's a nicer product like extra-virgin olive oil. Here's how to store your bottles of extra-virgin olive oil to keep them fresh for the longest possible time.
On their websites, brands like California Olive Ranch and Karimi Olive Oil stress that you need to keep your extra-virgin olive oil away from light and unexposed to air. Make sure you close your bottle of olive oil tightly while keeping it off the counter and in the pantry. Karimi Olive Oil says that 57 degrees Fahrenheit is the best temperature to store extra-virgin olive oil. If your olive oil is at a higher temperature, it must stay in a dark place.
In terms of a vessel for the olive oil, Karimi Olive Oil suggests putting the oil itself in a tinted or opaque glass bottle, or a container made out of stainless steel. However, you can also keep the extra-virgin olive oil in the bottle you bought it in if it's dark or tinted. The most important thing is to keep light blocked from the extra-virgin olive oil. Now that you're an expert, go enjoy your extra-virgin olive oil!