If you’re like me and regularly spend your evenings scrolling through the #pasta section of TikTok with your chin pressed to your chest, wine glass in hand, you’ve likely come across Graza. This squeeze bottle olive oil is truly a viral sensation, with home cooks and TikTok chefs squirting it into their pans and drizzling it over their salads with abandon.
When I first spotted the bottle I was intrigued, sure, but mostly skeptical. This bottle has everything going for it to make it TikTok famous—namely, a smart design and fun graphics. But all of the reviews that I saw about Graza went on and on about the functionality… not the taste. And that raised a red flag to me.
Not to sound too earnest and cringe-y, but I’m a pretty ~serious~ home chef. I freakin’ love to cook. I’ve been cooking since I was tall enough to stand on a step stool and reach the counter to help my mother roll cookie dough. I write a weekly newsletter about my family’s recipes, many of which involve frying or sautéing with olive oil (Or just drizzling a ton of that sh*t over the finished product). So, sure, as someone who has ruined many a shirt with an errant splash of olive oil as I glugged it into a pan, a squeeze bottle was appealing. But how did it taste?
Luckily, the kind folks at Graza sent me their Drizzle & Sizzle Variety Pack to test drive. Drizzle is their “finishing oil,” which means it’s the kind you use for dressing, not for cooking. That’s because, like most extra virgin olive oil, it has a lower smoke point than other oils, so it can quickly turn rancid in your pan if it’s over-heated—the kiss of death for any home cook (including the Trader Joe’s frozen food ones). Sizzle, on the other hand, was made for cooking at a high heat, thanks in large part to the type of olive they use to make it. So this is the oil that you toss into your pan when you want to get sh*t cooking.
My package came around Valentine’s Day, so not only did I receive two bottles, but a bar of dark chocolate as well. The instructions told me to break off a piece of chocolate, add a couple of drops of Drizzle, and then top with flakey sea salt. I quickly whipped up the snack for my boyfriend and I, and when we bit into it, we instantly looked at each other. “HOLY sh*t!” I exclaimed. We were off to a delicious start.
Over the next month, he and I made dozens of dishes with both Sizzle and Drizzle. I fried chicken cutlets, flipped zucchini fritters, and sautéd tomatoes for a fresh pomodoro sauce with Sizzle. We, well, drizzled Drizzle over salads and put pools of it into tiny ramekins to dunk sourdough bread. I even started squirting it over vanilla ice cream. We used both bottles so often that we ran out of them after a month and a half—that’s how good they are.
And the squirt bottle top proved to be incredibly useful. So often I’d glug olive oil out of huge canisters, getting it everywhere and causing my pantry shelves to become slick with goop. But Graza was different. Graza was neat. Graza was good.
So yes, I was successfully #influenced into buying my own bottles of Graza after my gifted set was depleted. I mean it when I say that never before in my 33 years as a proud Italian-American woman from the table flip capital of the world (New Jersey) have I tasted an olive oil as good as this. It’s earned a coveted, permanent spot in my pantry. And for that reason, I will not shut the f*ck up about it.
Shop It: Graza Drizzle & Sizzle Variety Pack, $35, Graza.com
