Olive oil's smoke point is highly dependent on the variety. Refined olive oil is just as useful for high-heat frying as just about any other. Extra virgin, on the other hand, is not something you want to cook with.

In Turkey we have a variety known as "naturel sizma", which is what comes off the olives before pressing even begins. In contrast to other olive oil varieties, it's appearance is cloudy, and you can barely warm it before it starts smoking.

Really? I only ever cook with extra virgin olive oil. I really can't tell the difference :P

You need this: http://www.oreilly.com/free/cooking-for-geeks-2ed.csp

Seriously your cooking can get a lot better aka will taste a ton better because your not cooking at the right temperature for most of your food.

PS My wife said the same thing when we got married. She would now slap out of any one's hands if they even tried to use Virgin Olive Oil on anything besides salad dressings and hummus.

PSS Food channel quick cooking shows are really poor.

I agree in general, but in many parts of Italy they generally fry everything in extra virgin olive oil.

Olive Oil and Virgin Olive Oil have different smoke points. Are you sure it is Extra Virgin Olive Oil???

That's because possibly there wasn't a difference. http://lifehacker.com/the-most-and-least-fake-extra-virgin-o...

> This hasn't changed

Serious Eats has at least given conflicting advice on the topic less than a year after that article was published: http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/03/cooking-with-olive-oil-fa...

Which I think perfectly illustrates the problem.

The linked article doesn't mention anything about things "not being good for you". It simply says that if you burn the oil it might not taste very good.

Nor does it say that Olive oil has the lowest smoke point, except Extra Virgin.

Which is just as well: the idea that olive oil is particularly bad for cooking is utter nonsense. There's no evidence for it at all. If you have can link to a peer reviewed Chemistry or Medical paper that says differently, then I'm willing to change my opinion.

This is true if you're heating oil in a pan, but once there's food in the pan, the temperature stays close to the boiling point of water, and almost no oils will smoke at that temperature.