What Babish Gets Right About Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Andrew Rea, also known as Babish, is a popular YouTube cook and creator of the “Babish Culinary Universe.” Known for his playful approach to cooking and food exploration, Babish has a knack for making gourmet ingredients and cooking techniques accessible to viewers of all levels.

In his recent video, he dives into the world of extra virgin olive oil, taste-testing and ranking 39 (!) supermarket options — including some brands from North American Olive Oil Association members. Babish has fun with it, drinking olive oil straight from a glass. Like a wine tasting, he swishes the oil in his mouth, paying close attention to flavor notes, assigns a personality trait to each one for a humorous twist, and then scores each oil on a 1-to-10 scale.

Tasting so many oils in one sitting is never recommended; expert tasters are advised never to taste more than 12 samples in a single day, let alone under an hour!  So, the results of his tasting frenzy and his rankings must be taken with a grain of salt.  Despite his unconventional approach, you can draw several valid conclusions from his observations.

Here’s what he gets right and what he gets wrong.  

What Babish Gets Right: 

• Demystifying Olive Oil: Babish's accessible approach to tasting common supermarket olive oils helps viewers see that great taste and quality don’t always mean high prices. His favorite oils are widely available and affordably priced, which supports the idea that quality olive oil can be accessible to all. 

• Appreciating Variety: His message about keeping multiple oils on hand for different purposes demonstrates that olive oils have diverse flavor profiles that can elevate different dishes. 

• Emphasis on Personal Taste: Babish emphasizes that taste is personal — a great takeaway that aligns with our message that there is a lot of diversity in flavors of extra virgin olive oils.   He is correct that there isn’t just one “right” olive oil for every application. Taste different olive oils and find what you like. In fact, some of the brands he did not like have scored well in more conventional taste tests (see this for example) and may turn out to be your own personal favorites. 

• Harvest Dates and Best-Before Dates (BBDs) Don’t Tell the Whole Story.  His top pick was a 2021 extra virgin olive oil, which can indicate his personal taste preference for less robust oils (since flavor dissipates with time), or it may be illustrative of the fact that an olive oil that was harvested almost three years ago that has been protected from heat, light, and oxygen can remain good even beyond its stated best-before date (although once opened, the oil will likely begin to lose flavor quickly). At the end of the day, your personal taste preferences trump harvest dates and BBD’s. 

• Quality does not Equate to Origin.  We appreciate that Babish avoids simplistic advice like “only use single-origin olive oil” or “avoid multi-country blends of olive oils.” He also does not favor one country’s olive oil over another. Most of his favorite olive oils use olives from different regions, balancing the unique flavor characteristics each harvest brings, just like a blended wine. This process helps ensure a consistent, balanced product. 

All that said, there are a couple of issues we wish the video handled better.  

What Babish Gets Wrong: 

• What Makes an Olive Oil Special Can’t Be Assessed by a Swig.  Olive oils are also like wines in that they are available in good, better, and best qualities.  They are not all created equal, and there may be good reasons to choose the best quality that you can afford.  For many consumers, in the quest for that special olive oil, it is also important to consider the varied stories behind each brand and product—the type (or types) of olives from which it was made, the land (or lands) where they were grown, the people who cultivated them and extracted the oil, and the history and culture of the companies that brought the oils to the market. Those factors, to the extent you know something about them, contribute to the taste and the quality and may add to the cost of making the oil. But they also can reflect things that you may care deeply about, like sustainability, or add to the romance of your choice, helping you find different olive oils that you not only like but love.
• Overlooking Positive Bitter and Pungent Attributes: Although personal taste is important to many consumers, so are olive oil’s potential health benefits. Babish neglected to mention that bitter or peppery notes indicate the presence of healthful polyphenols and flavonoids believed to help prevent chronic diseases, which can be a reason why some choose a particular olive oil. Moreover, Babish tasted the oils from a glass without food. Although this is a useful technique for evaluating olive oil, it is not how it is going to be used.  It would have been worth noting that while bitterness and peppery flavor may not suit every palate when consumed straight from the bottle, these attributes add complexity and nutritional value that can be beautifully balanced when paired with the right foods. 

• Saying You Should Avoid Cooking with EVOO: Babish advises against cooking with extra virgin olive oil, but that’s an ill-informed myth not backed by science. Not only is EVOO safe to cook with, but studies show it is among the most stable and safest cooking oils available. Extra virgin olive oil is perfectly suited for home cooking, from sautéing and frying to baking and roasting.    

With those thoughts in mind, go ahead and watch Babish go mano-a-mano with olive oil if you have some time to spare. And while we don’t recommend tasting 39 olive oils in one sitting, we do encourage people to go out and experiment. Again, it is similar to wine—there is a world of flavor pairing to enjoy. Explore the olive oil aisle, conduct your own mini tastings, and try different oils with different foods to discover what you enjoy most. There’s an olive oil for every taste and every budget — each deserving of its place in your kitchen. 

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If you would like to become an extra virgin olive oil expert, read our free ebook “Olive Oil from Tree to Table.” This comprehensive guide will teach you all you need to know.