Use More Oil

Use more oil is easy to misunderstand.

It sounds like a provocation, which it is.

It sounds like something printed on a T-shirt, which it probably will be.

It sounds like the sort of thing shouted by someone holding a squeeze bottle and trying to make a point.

But in the kitchen, it means something fairly simple.

Use enough.

Enough to coat the potatoes properly.

Enough to give the mushrooms a chance to brown.

Enough to fry an egg rather than politely warm it.

Enough that the tomatoes leave behind that mixture of juice, salt and oil at the bottom of the plate that requires another piece of bread.

More does not mean excess.

It means that enough is probably more than you think.

We have become strangely cautious with oil

Watch someone pour olive oil into a pan and there is often a tiny moment of hesitation.

A quick pour.

Stop.

Maybe that's enough.

The food goes in.

Then the onions catch before they soften.

The vegetables look dry.

The potatoes refuse to crisp.

Something sticks.

And the cook starts looking for another solution.

More stirring.

Lower heat.

A splash of water.

Another ingredient.

Another sauce.

Sometimes dinner did not need rescuing.

The pan just needed more oil.

Oil is a cooking tool

Oil isn't simply there to stop things sticking.

It is part of the cooking environment.

It helps transfer heat between the pan and the food.

It helps ingredients make better contact with hot surfaces.

It carries flavour from garlic, chilli, herbs and spices through a dish.

It coats vegetables so they can roast and colour.

It becomes part of sauces and dressings.

It gives pasta gloss and weight.

It turns the juice from a tomato into something you want to drag bread through.

This is why treating oil as an optional extra makes very little sense.

It has a job.

Let it do it.

The tablespoon problem

Recipes love a tablespoon of oil.

It is neat.

Measurable.

Easy to write.

“Heat one tablespoon of olive oil in a large pan.”

But your large pan might be 24cm.

Mine might be 30cm.

Your mushrooms might be dry.

Mine might release half a glass of water.

You might be cooking two courgettes.

I might have become overexcited and put four in the pan.

There cannot always be one correct tablespoon.

Cooking is irritatingly resistant to that kind of precision.

The amount of oil you need depends on what you are cooking, how much of it there is, the pan you're using and what you're trying to make happen.

So look at the food.

If everything looks dry, add some.

If you're roasting vegetables and half of them have no oil on them, add some.

If you're frying and the pan looks bare, add some.

If the tomatoes have created a pool of juice and oil that tastes brilliant, leave it alone and find bread.

The point isn't to abandon recipes.

It is to stop treating the number as more authoritative than the food in front of you.

Enough looks different every time

Potatoes want a proper coating.

Onions need enough oil to soften without catching immediately.

Greens can take considerably more than their volume initially suggests.

Eggs fried in a generous layer of hot oil develop crisp, ridiculous edges.

Beans can go from worthy to genuinely desirable with a good pour at the end.

Tomatoes want enough oil that it mixes with their juice and the salt and becomes part of the dish.

Pasta should not look dusty.

There is no universal measurement for any of this.

There is only the effect you're trying to create.

Use enough to get there.

Restaurants aren't frightened of the bottle

There are plenty of reasons restaurant food tastes different.

Professional cooks have preparation, equipment, repetition and considerably more people involved in making your dinner.

But there is another, less mysterious difference.

They tend to use ingredients like they mean it.

Salt.

Heat.

Butter.

Acid.

Oil.

At home, we can become strangely determined to achieve the same generosity while removing the things that create it.

A teaspoon of oil.

A tiny pinch of salt.

Medium heat.

Then another three ingredients when everything tastes flat.

Often the better answer is not more complexity.

It is more of the basics.

Use more oil doesn't only mean in the pan

There is the oil you cook with.

Then there is the oil that never sees heat.

The pour over beans.

The gloss across pasta.

The oil on tomatoes.

Into soup.

Over greens.

Onto fish.

With bread.

That final pour is sometimes treated as decoration.

Three beautiful drops arranged around the plate as evidence that somebody owns olive oil.

We have other plans for it.

Finishing oil is seasoning.

It adds aroma, bitterness, fruit and pepper at the moment you eat the food.

So pour enough that you can actually taste it.

This is why we made Kitchen

Kitchen should not feel precious.

It exists to get used.

For onions.

Garlic.

Eggs.

Potatoes.

Roast vegetables.

Fish.

Sauces.

Beans.

Focaccia.

Tuesday dinner when you haven't decided what Tuesday dinner is yet.

It should be the bottle you pick up without thinking about whether the occasion deserves it.

The occasion is dinner.

That is enough.

And this is why we made Table

Table has a different job.

It is there when you want the oil itself to show up.

Raw.

At the end.

Over the food you've just cooked or the food that barely needed cooking at all.

It should move around the table.

People should pour their own.

Someone should use more than you expected.

The bottle should get emptier.

Neither Kitchen nor Table was designed to be admired for six months.

They are ingredients.

Use them.

More is not always better

This is probably worth saying.

We are an olive oil company telling you to use more olive oil.

Suspicious.

So no, the answer to every cooking problem is not to empty half a bottle into it.

Sometimes you've used enough.

Sometimes you've used too much.

Sometimes the problem is heat.

Sometimes it is salt.

Sometimes the mushrooms are sitting in three centimetres of their own water because you put an entire punnet into a tiny pan.

Cooking still requires judgement.

“Use more oil” isn't an instruction to stop thinking.

It is an instruction to stop automatically assuming less is better.

Use what the food needs.

Start tonight

You do not need a new recipe.

Cook whatever you were already going to cook.

Just pay attention to the oil.

Coat the vegetables properly.

Give the pan enough.

Let things colour.

Taste the food.

Then, if it needs it, pour some more over the finished plate.

See what changes.

Use more oil.

Not because more is always better.

Because enough is often more than you think.