I’ll read how a cooking oil will become rancid, or the oil in nuts, or the oil in whole-wheat flour. But I never notice. I never find that something has now become disgusting in that way.
(Although I’m not crazy about nuts to begin with, and I’ve never had a fresh one from a tree or anything, so it’s possible I’m reacting to something there.)
How much do you notice rancidity? Do the people around you detect it similarly?
Some discussions online mention rancidity in connection with supertasting, but I strongly suspect I am a supertaster because I have to go very light on most bitter ingredients, cut back on sugar in a recipe so it doesn’t just taste like sugar, find too much fat to be gross, and so on. [Reading about supertasting is such a blend of sadness and vindication. You mean grapefruits are genuinely supposed to taste good? And an avocado all by itself? And raw pineapple? Honestly?]
You know, when I used to go to stores that sell various fancy imported olive oils-- in bottles, I haven’t tried the bulk bring-your-own-container ones-- I so often found the oil already rancid that I’ve just stopped going and wondered how they do business. But, now I wonder if it’s like so many things where some people are just less sensitive to the flavor. I have to say, in oils it it’s never so bad to me that I refuse to cook with it, but to drizzle it on salad or bread ‘raw’ would be gross. In nuts, it can really put me off, though, especially if the nuts seem stale in other ways. I’m also not a big fan of nuts generally, though. Rancid butter is another thing and I’ll just throw it away. Happens at my parents’ all the time because they don’t refrigerate it and they live in a warm climate. My mom doesn’t care about rancid butter but will complain all night about rancid olive oil if you put it on her salad. So I guess it’s complicated. Or just kind of on the edge of being yucky, so other factors can take precedence.
When I’ve tried olive oils, I’ve always been indifferent to them and thought I almost might as well be using soybean oil. And people will say “you’re not buying a fancy enough one”, but it’s hard to imagine it could taste a dollar an ounce worth of wonderful. I did buy a cheap enough one once to think it smelled like acetone. “You have to get it this month of the year from this supplier who will probably send you a new enough batch and maybe nothing will happen to it in shipping” is tiring to think about.
I don’t buy a lot of olive oil now because my family isn’t into salads, which is pretty much the only thing I’d use the tasty cold press kind for. For refined oil to cook with, it makes no difference–the taste is very mild and I don’t think it matters health wise.