Martha Stewart Says Every Kitchen Should Have 2 Bottles Of This Ingredient

With grocery costs on the rise, keeping your pantry stocked with all the staple ingredients you love to have around can become challenging. Extra-virgin olive oil is a perfect example. It is typically a high-cost item that can raise your grocery bill significantly. However, according to Martha Stewart, you don't always need extra-virgin olive oil when creating a culinary masterpiece, which may offer a bit of relief to your food budget. 

Martha Stewart is well-known for offering sage advice to home cooks, from how to season cast iron pans to making the fluffiest baked potatoes you have ever had. Regarding olive oil, she likes to keep two bottles around to save a little scratch. It might seem counterintuitive — after all, buying two jars instead of one will make that checkout total higher — but there is a compelling logic in her argument.

It all has to do with how you use it. Expensive extra-virgin olive oil is renowned for its pungent fruity flavor, but when heated to high temps, the ingredient loses its intensity and can even break down into a smoky mess. In Martha Stewart's mind, that is money literally going up in smoke. She recommends buying regular olive oil for all your searing and sauce-making and saving the EVOO for fare that will best showcase its distinct flavor.

In the grocery store, you will notice regular olive oil tends to have a lighter color than its premium counterpart, which is reflective of its less complex quality. Give it a taste, and you will realize why extra-virgin olive oil tends to come with a higher price tag. However, EVOO has a markedly lower smoke point than the lighter version. When you apply high heat to the oil, much of that pricy flavor is lost. The cheaper variety of olive oil may have a less interesting flavor profile, but it can better take the heat and is ideal for searing a steak or sautéing veggies. In other words, when cooking, it will often perform the task you want just as well as the good stuff for a much lower cost.

With its full flavor, extra-virgin olive oil puts a chef's kiss on cuisine incorporating raw or already-cooked ingredients, like salad dressings or finished baked goods. You can also use EVOO to elevate some desserts. Martha Stewart would know — she may enjoy the finer things in life, but she's not about to go wasting a superior ingredient you won't taste in a dish just to say it is there. By taking her advice and storing both varieties in your kitchen cabinets, you can stretch your extra-virgin olive oil a bit longer, and you will still have the regular stuff around for when you simply need to add some fat to a pan.