Welcome to Kitchen Queries, where the nigella.com team will answer your cooking or food related questions.  We’d love you to submit some of your recipe problems, dilemmas or queries for us to get our teeth into!

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• EVO

  Hi, I have been looking at the Persian Lamb Stew recipe on Nigella's website and wondered what is "evo", mentioned in the ingredients list?

  Posted by amu. Answered on 2nd Aug 2012 at 12.00

  From the nigella team:

  EVO, or EVOO is an acronym for extra virgin olive oil - it is used sometimes as shorthand to save typing out the words in full. The term is particularly used by the American TV chef Rachael Ray. Extra virgin olive oil  comes from the first pressing of the olives and has no more than 0.8% oleic acid.

  Usually extra virgin olive oil will be used for salad dressings or for dipping or drizzling as it is expensive and has a better taste than regular olive oil. It can be used for cooking, as it is in the Persiabn Lamb Stew recipe, though we feel that regular olive oilis fine for casseroles and stews as the longer cooking time will mean that the subtle flavours of the extra virgin oil will be lost.

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