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Avocado vs Olive Oil

Created January 24, 2025
Top view of olive oil in a glass bowl with a tomato and basil leaves nearby.

Explore the flavorful similarities and differences of avocado vs olive oil to discover which oil best suits your culinary needs. Delve into the unique characteristics and benefits of each, from their distinct taste profiles to their diverse applications in cooking and baking.

Both avocado oil and olive oil are derived from fruits. While they share some health benefits, their differences lie in taste, cooking versatility, and their recommended cooking temperatures. Here's a general overview of their unique qualities:

Avocado Oil Overview:

Extracted from ripe avocados, this oil has a mild, buttery flavor lending it a versatility in both savory and sweet dishes without overpowering them. Its neutral taste makes it ideal for dishes where you want the other ingredients to shine. Given its high heat tolerance, it’s perfect for roasting, frying, or sautéing and used cold it also makes a seamless component in homemade mayonnaise and marinades.

Olive Oil Overview:

Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) is known for its rich, fruity to peppery flavor, making it a staple in Mediterranean cuisine. This bolder oil is best saved for recipes where its full flavor can shine—like in salad dressings, dips, or drizzled over finished meals.

How They're Made

Both oils are made from crushing fruits and the process is similar in some ways, but there are a few key differences.

How Avocado Oil is Made

Fruit Selection:

With how many avocados are grown and sold every year, often the blemished or "unshapely" fruits are the ones chosen to be pressed into an oil. They are picked from the avocado tree, or persea americana, and thoroughly washed.

Pulp Extraction:

Both the skins and the flesh can be used to make avocado oil, but the pit is always discarded or used to plant new trees. Depending on the manufactures method they will often separate the skins from the flesh and choose which they need and process them separately.

Oil Extraction:

  • Cold Pressed- The wildly agreed upon best method is a cold-pressed oil. This method crushes the avocado and presses it to squeeze out the natural oils. This keeps the quality high but a cold-pressed process can have a lot of waste.
  • Solvent Extraction- As a chemical process, there is a quality trade of to this method, but it produces far more oil for the manufacturer. Solvent extractions make sure all the oil is extracted and then the solvents are removed. 

Refining: Sometimes there are filtering processes to make it cleaner, look better, and to last longer.

How Olive Oil is Made

Picked and Cleaned: The best olives are hand harvested but large operations may have it mechanized. They're checked for idea ripeness and cleaned to remove any leaves and debris.

Malaxation: This is the key difference between the two production methods! One the olives are crushed, the olive paste is gently mixed and kneaded for a period of time, this is called malaxation. and it helps to break down the fruit and release more oil.

Oil Extraction:

  • Cold Pressed- Like the avocados, this process is where the mashed fruit is squeezed to extract the oil from the olive fruit paste.
  • Centrifugation- The most efficient method for olive oil extraction is using this high speed spinning method to separate the oil from the remaining solids.

Refining: Sometimes the olive oil needs to be further removed from water or other solids (also called pomace) through a filtering processes to make it cleaner, look better, and to last longer.

So, while both involve crushing and extracting oil from fruit, olive oil production uses a malaxation step to release more the oil from the paste, and often uses centrifugation for extraction.

Best Uses

Each oil brings something unique to your cooking repertoire. Here’s a breakdown of when we recommend you use each and why:

Avocado Oil: Best for High-Heat Cooking

Thanks to its high smoke point of about 570°F, avocado oil remains stable under intense heat. This makes it perfect for Frying and Sautéing: Whether you’re crisping up veggies or meats in a skillet, this oil can handle the heat. Grill and Roast methods are also great for avocado oil as high-heat oven roasting or on the grill to give your meats and veggies a beautiful, golden finish that this oil can enhance.

Olive Oil: Best for Low-Heat Cooking and Cold Dishes

Salad Dressings and Marinades are great for olive oil and add complexity to the flavor. Add a splash of olive oil to dips like hummus or pesto to elevate their flavors. Olive oil also works wonderfully as a finishing touch to soups or pastas. It's also a great cooking oil but with a lower smoke point of about 400°F, keep an eye on your pan and make sure it's a medium high heat or less.

Nutritional Details

Both avocado oil and olive oil are packed with good fats, making them beneficial when used as part of a balanced diet.

Avocado Oil contains mostly monounsaturated fats, particularly oleic acid, and antioxidants like vitamin E.

Olive Oil, especially the extra virgin oil, is rich in polyphenols, which are powerful antioxidants. Olive oil is a foundational element of the Mediterranean diet.

The choice between avocado oil vs. olive oil ultimately comes down to your cooking needs and flavor preferences. If high-heat cooking like frying, searing or roasting is your go-to, avocado oil is your winner with its higher smoke point. But if you're diving into flavorful salad dressings, drizzles or Mediterranean-inspired dishes, reach for olive oil to bring out a robust, complex flavor. There is a large world of cooking oils and fats you can use all offering unique flavors, smoke points, and shelf lives but avocado oil and olive oil remain a few of our tried and true classics.

Ultimately, stocking both oils would give you the flexibility to create a wide range of dishes to balance both functionality and taste! With this guide, we hope to have empowered you to make decisions on classic oil choices confidently in your kitchen. Whether you're roasting, baking, or simply dressing a salad, there’s a perfect oil for every flavorful adventure that awaits you!