WEBVTT - How is olive oil made? 0:00:00.520 --> 0:00:03.600 Welcome to brain Stuff from house Stuff Works dot Com 0:00:03.600 --> 0:00:15.040 where smart happens him Marshall Brain with today's question, how 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:18.040 do they make olive oil or where does olive oil 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:22.120 come from? Most people come into contact with olives in 0:00:22.280 --> 0:00:25.560 one of three ways. There are the olives that go 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:29.080 on pizzas and into dinner entrees. They either come fresh 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:31.920 or they come from a can. Second, there are the 0:00:31.960 --> 0:00:36.360 olives with pimientos that go into martinis. And then third 0:00:36.400 --> 0:00:39.120 there's olive oil. Now, in my case, there was a 0:00:39.159 --> 0:00:41.279 fourth way. When I was a kid, I grew up 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:44.960 in Huntington's Beach, California, which is in southern California near 0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:48.920 l A, and we lived in this little subdivision that 0:00:49.159 --> 0:00:52.280 the developer had planted an olive tree in the front 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:55.920 yard of every house. So when I was a little kid, 0:00:56.480 --> 0:00:59.440 these olive trees would produce olives every year and we 0:00:59.480 --> 0:01:01.800 would have olive fights with them. So the fourth way 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:05.360 to experience olives is through olive fights. But ignoring that 0:01:05.920 --> 0:01:10.200 it seems odd, but olives, whether you're having fights with 0:01:10.280 --> 0:01:13.640 them or buying them at the store, have oil in them. 0:01:13.880 --> 0:01:16.280 Not only do the seeds have oil in them, like 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:19.800 all seeds do. Like sesame seeds and soybeans and corn, 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:22.760 they all have oil in them. Olive seeds have oil 0:01:22.800 --> 0:01:26.760 in them, but also the fleshy part has olive oil 0:01:26.920 --> 0:01:30.839 and its cells as well. So to make olive oil, 0:01:31.120 --> 0:01:33.479 what you have to do is you have to release 0:01:33.720 --> 0:01:36.640 the oil from the cells of the flesh as well 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:38.959 as the cells from the seed. Or if you're making 0:01:39.000 --> 0:01:42.080 a really high end boutique olive oil, you take the 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:44.640 seeds out and you just get the oil from the flesh. 0:01:45.080 --> 0:01:47.400 So the first step in making olive oil is to 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:50.400 go out to your olive orchard which you've planted somewhere, 0:01:50.760 --> 0:01:53.440 and harvest the olives at just the right time. You 0:01:53.440 --> 0:01:57.480 don't want them to be too unripe or you get 0:01:57.520 --> 0:01:59.840 acid e kind of olive oil, and you don't want 0:01:59.840 --> 0:02:03.360 to be too ripe or you get disgusting olive oil. 0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:06.080 You want them to be just the right level of ripeness. 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:09.320 You harvest those olives, you could either rake them out 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:11.000 of the tree, or you can climb up in the 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:14.280 tree and hit them with your hands or um. You know, 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:16.880 maybe there's a mechanical shaker like they use on some 0:02:17.000 --> 0:02:20.240 nut trees, though I doubt olive people would be the 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:24.800 sorts to use mechanical shakers. So you harvest these olives 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:27.239 by knocking them out of the tree into some cloths 0:02:27.360 --> 0:02:30.240 that you've spread on the ground. Then you wash the 0:02:30.280 --> 0:02:32.880 olives and separate out as many of the leaves as 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:36.440 you can, and now it's time to crush them. So 0:02:36.480 --> 0:02:39.720 the old fashioned way to crush them is to take 0:02:40.000 --> 0:02:43.440 giant granite wheels. So think about the wheel on your car. 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:46.480 It's on an axle. There's the wheel and the rubber 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:49.720 is hitting the road. Well, imagine making that wheel out 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:53.239 of granite. But now imagine making it immense, say four 0:02:53.320 --> 0:02:55.640 or five feet in diameter, so it weighs about a 0:02:55.720 --> 0:02:59.240 thousand pounds, and you put it on an axle with 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:02.240 another big granite wheel on the other side, and you 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:05.880 spin them in a tub that you've filled with your 0:03:05.919 --> 0:03:08.600 olives that you want to crush. So you're going to 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:12.680 drive over these olives with your giant, thousand pound granite 0:03:12.720 --> 0:03:15.600 wheels for about a half an hour and you're gonna 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:20.079 mash that set of olives up into a paste. Now 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:21.520 that's one way to do it. The other way to 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:24.240 do it is with some kind of mechanical shredder kind 0:03:24.280 --> 0:03:27.680 of thing that uses blades to finally chop up the olives. 0:03:27.720 --> 0:03:30.440 But either way, what you're getting is this paste that 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:34.240 consists of the olive flesh as well as the olive seeds, 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:38.560 all ground up and finally minced. You take that and 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:40.920 you need to let it sit for about an hour. 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:44.240 So let me pause for a second here. As I'm 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:46.720 recording this, there's someone listening in the background and a 0:03:46.840 --> 0:03:49.680 question has come in. The question is what does an 0:03:49.680 --> 0:03:52.680 olive seed look like? Because usually when you get olives, 0:03:52.760 --> 0:03:55.600 the seeds have been removed. Now, if you have olive 0:03:55.640 --> 0:03:57.480 fights with all of these little kids, you see the 0:03:57.520 --> 0:03:59.880 seeds all the time. That's the best part. So this 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:03.240 seed is sort of like a miniaturized peach pit. It's 0:04:03.440 --> 0:04:06.600 very hard, like a peach pit is, and it's just 0:04:06.760 --> 0:04:08.960 one of them at the center of the olive. And 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:11.680 to make an olive with pimentos, a push that seed 0:04:11.720 --> 0:04:14.600 out and put a pimento in its place, and that's 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:17.839 why you never see the seeds anyway. So now you're 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:21.240 paste has been sitting for a half hour or an hour, 0:04:21.520 --> 0:04:23.560 and the oil has had a chance to kind of 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:26.960 separate out and develop and it's time to extract the oil. 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:29.039 You do that in one of two ways. The old 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:33.000 fashioned way is to put the paste in a press 0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:37.120 and to apply a lot of pressure hydraulic ly to 0:04:38.080 --> 0:04:41.479 force the oil out, and you have your olive oil. 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:45.640 The more modern way is to put the whole blob 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:48.240 of paste and a little water into a centrifuge and 0:04:48.400 --> 0:04:51.320 spin it up and it separates, so you get this 0:04:51.640 --> 0:04:54.960 seedy kind of stuff on the outside of the centrifuge, 0:04:55.040 --> 0:04:58.200 then the fleshy kind of stuff, the water based stuff 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:00.279 in the middle, and then in the center of the 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:03.839 centrifuge you get the oil because it's the lightest thing 0:05:03.960 --> 0:05:08.120 in that package. And presto, you have olive oil. It's 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:09.880 ready to be put in a bottle or a can 0:05:10.000 --> 0:05:12.599 or wherever it's gonna get put so it can be 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:15.200 shipped to you. Now, when you go to buy olive 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:18.279 oil at the grocery store, you've seen these designations. There's 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:22.719 virgin olive oil and extra virgin olive oil, and olive oil, 0:05:22.760 --> 0:05:26.320 olive oil and refined olive oil. What's the difference between 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:31.520 all these different kinds. Well, the difference between virgin and 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:35.680 extra virgin has to do with acidity. So both of 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:40.039 these things have been processed using the process we just 0:05:40.160 --> 0:05:44.120 discussed where you crush the olives. You don't heat them 0:05:44.200 --> 0:05:47.080 up to a high temperature, you don't use any chemicals 0:05:47.080 --> 0:05:50.920 for oil extraction. You just crush them, you let them sit, 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:53.680 then you press or centrifuge the oil out of it. 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:57.279 Either way you're gonna get virgin or extra virgin olive oil, 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:02.680 but the differences based on the acidity. The lowest acidity 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:06.279 gets called extra virgin olive oil. If it's higher acidity, 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:09.039 it's virgin olive oil. If it has too high of acidity, 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:11.440 you can't call it either, and you have to do 0:06:11.520 --> 0:06:14.600 something else with it. And in that case you might 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:18.039 send it through some kind of process or blending to 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:22.520 try to bring down that acidity level. And then there's 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:25.400 also what you can do after the facts. So with 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:28.000 that paste you have left over, there's still some oil 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:30.960 left in it, you might try to extract olive oil 0:06:31.279 --> 0:06:35.000 from that using heat or chemicals, and then that's just 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:38.760 plain old olive oil or refined olive oil, probably not 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:43.000 used for cooking, but used for something else. Now, having 0:06:43.120 --> 0:06:45.320 learned all about olive oil, I will tell you one 0:06:45.360 --> 0:06:48.000 thing that kind of disappoints me. And that's the fact 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:51.599 that in this subdivision there were hundreds of houses, which 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:55.880 meant hundreds of olive trees and thousands of pounds of olives. 0:06:55.920 --> 0:06:59.680 In all likelihood, if we had been really industrious as children, 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:02.719 we could have collected up all those olives and started 0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:06.800 our own olive oil press. But I guess, for one thing, 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:09.760 people in America maybe weren't so interested in olive oil 0:07:09.800 --> 0:07:12.000 when I was a kid. In second we weren't quite 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:17.360 that industrious. So until next time. For more on this 0:07:17.480 --> 0:07:19.920 and thousands of other topics. Does that how stuff works 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:21.960 dot com and don't forget to check out the brain 0:07:22.040 --> 0:07:24.360 stuff blog on the house stuff Works dot com home page. 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:27.240 You can also follow brain stuff on Facebook or Twitter 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:32.280 at brain stuff hs W. The house Stuff Works iPhone 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:35.240 app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.