If you’ve ever been shopping in a gourmet market, you’re sure to have purchased beautiful olive oils mixed with all kinds of herbs and spices. While those bottles make great gifts and improve your dishes, what if you could make those same oils yourself? Here, we’ll explore how to infuse your olive oil at home! It’s simple, easy, affordable, and most importantly, extremely flavorful.
Shop high-quality olive oils at Tantillo Foods and start infusing fantastic flavors today!
How to Use Infused Oils
Infused oils are best used for drizzling, dipping, or as an ingredient for vinaigrettes. If you cook with them, it can actually remove the infused flavor and potentially turn the oil bitter. Here’s how to use infused oils in a way that preserves their flavor:
- Drizzle over salads, cheese, or charcuterie
- Finish hot dishes like soup, sauces, roasts or pastas
- Great for dipping bread
- A key ingredient in making vinaigrettes
How to Infuse Your Olive Oil: Two Methods
There are two ways to infuse olive oils—cold infusion and hot infusion. Both methods can be done easily in the comfort of your home!
Cold Infusion
Cold infusion is best used on fresh ingredients. Think fresh herbs and aromatics like basil, garlic, lemongrass, and mint. Since the oil and ingredients are not heated, it preserves their fresh, vibrant, and lively flavors.
For fresh herbs: We recommend that you use ½ cup of herbs to one cup of Tantillo Foods Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Use your food processor to blend the oil and herbs together until smooth. Then, strain the mixture using a fine-mesh strainer or cheesecloth. Just like that, the result is a colorful oil that’s rich in flavor.
For fresh aromatics: There are three ways to infuse fresh aromatics. For each, start with two tablespoons of aromatics to one cup of oil. Then:
- Method 1. Blend the oil and aromatics together in a food processor and strain them, just like the fresh herb method.
- Method 2. The second method is to add peeled aromatics to the oil and let them infuse over time.
- Method 3. Finally, you can roast your aromatics, let them cool, and then add them to the oil, which offers a different flavor profile.
Keep in mind that all cold infused oils need to be refrigerated. Moisture that’s found in fresh ingredients may cause bacteria growth if left at room temperature. Keep your oils safe by refrigerating them shortly after you make or use them.
Hot Infusion
Hot infusion is best used when infusing olive oil with dry ingredients. This includes items like dried spices and seasonings such as peppercorns, cinnamon, anise, fennel seeds, dried spicy peppers, etc.
Here are the steps for the hot infusion method:
- Begin with two tablespoons of dried seasonings to one cup of Tantillo Foods Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- Add your desired ingredients to the pan filled with oil
- Gradually heat the olive oil to 150°F. This temperature allows for the maximum infusion of flavor
- Once the desired temperature has been reached, let the oil cool to room temperate
- Strain the oil and bottle it OR keep the ingredients in the oil for display
Take note that you do not need to refrigerate hot infused oil. As long as the bottle is well-sealed, you can store it for a few weeks in the pantry.
Shelf Life
Infused olive oil does not have the same shelf life as regular olive oil. Refrigerated, cold infused oils will keep for about a month before losing their flavor. Hot infused oils will keep for about three weeks to a month.
There’s a reason why they have such a short shelf life. Once the bottle has been opened, altered, and introduced to oxygen, the oil starts to degrade. Think of infused oils like an opened bottle of wine—it’s best used immediately to preserve the flavor.
Infused Olive Oil Flavor Combinations
Creating flavor combinations is so much fun. These are just a couple of our favorite infused olive oils, but the sky is truly the limit when it comes to flavor combinations!
Cold Infused Combinations
- Roasted garlic and basil
- Lemon thyme
- Sun-dried tomato and oregano
- Cilantro and jalapeño
- Shallot and tarragon
Hot Infused Combinations
- Peppercorn medley and dried sage
- Rosemary and clove
- Five-spice and Szechuan spicy peppers
- Turmeric and garam masala
- Cardamom and star anise
Shop Olive Oil from Tantillo Foods
Are you ready to infuse olive oil yourself? The first ingredient on your shopping list should be a great olive oil, of course! Tantillo Foods offers a fabulous selection of high-quality olive oils at affordable prices. Browse our selection today to start making fabulous infusions—and let us know what you come up with!
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