Avocado Oil

Let me tell you about Avocado Oil, and why it earns its place next to your everyday bottle.

This oil is pressed from the flesh of the fruit, not from a seed. Tip the bottle and watch it fall — a smooth, silky pour, no hesitation, no beads clinging to the glass. One hundred grams gives you 884 kilocalories, pure fat, nothing else — remember that every time you pour.

Choose it by colour and by nose. Unrefined Avocado Oil is deep green and smells grassy, almost like fresh-cut herbs, with a buttery finish. That flavour is its whole point, and it shows best raw, spooned straight over a salad or warm vegetables. Refined Avocado Oil is pale, almost colourless, and nearly silent on the nose; that flat smell is not a flaw, it's simply what refining does. What you never want, in either bottle, is a waxy, crayon-like smell — that's rancid, and it goes straight down the drain.

Some people say Avocado Oil is only for salads, too delicate for the stove. No! Pour the refined kind into a hot pan, watch for a gentle shimmer, and it cooks beautifully. The mistake that belief leads to: cooks pour the grassy, unrefined oil into the same hot pan without watching it, and the moment it starts to smoke and sting the eyes, the flavour they loved is gone — so keep that bottle for finishing, not frying.