Spray It, Don't Say It

I use olive oil quite a bit, and for a while I've looked for good oil spray cannister. And I finally found one. It's wonderful, works the best of the ones I've had, and -- all the better -- is the least expensive. If you use oil misters, it's worth reading about it and checking out. It might surprise you.

Previously, I've tried two others. I liked them both, but they each had small things about them that kept me looking.

The first one that I got was a popular model from Misto. It's an aluminum cannister that you pump to create a vacuum. It cost $16. The spray was excellent. The issues were that it didn't hold the vacuum for very long, so it was a bother to keep pumping it ever second or third time I would use it. Also, they recommended cleaning it periodically, which entailed taking apart its various parts and was a bit of a bother, too. But it generally did it job well.

I next tried a model from Flairosol for $21. This was a glass device, with a plastic trigger -- and best of all, no pumping was necessary. I loved that about it. What I didn't love is I requires a quick way of pressing the trigger to get a nice spray. And if you didn't do it correctly (which I often didn't), you instead got a stream of oil. That's okay, and some people might like that, but it wasn't what I most wanted.

That brought about me testing a third device. I was wary, since it seemed like it wouldn't work well. But I decided to test it. And to my very pleasant surprise -- it was wonderful. The best of all three by far. And by far the least expensive. And by "least expensive," I mean...essentially free.

This is the mister --

Yes, my empty I Can't Believe It's Not Butter spray bottle!

I've used the product for years, mostly for spraying it on popcorn. But it's good on cooked vegetables, or spraying on food you might want to use butter lightly with that you can control well. But for me, mainly it's on popcorn.

However, I didn't ever think of it as an oil sprayer. I'd finish a bottle and toss it. Even when I recently pondered, hmm, would this work for oil?? -- I wasn't sure if it would. After all, oil has a fairly thick consistency, it's not like the liquid in a normal spray bottle you might use for household cleaning. But then I realized (what I should have realized much earlier) that the butter-like product in the bottle was thick, too. So...maybe it would work?

And did it ever work! The spray was terrific and worked the first time, no pumping to build up pressure or anything. I could control the spray easily.

And it's free! As long as you use the product, of course. But as I said, even if you don't use it for anything more than popcorn, it's good for that. And, for that matter, if you just want it for the spray bottle and decide to dump the liquid down the drain, it only costs around $4.50. So, even wasting the product itself, the bottle is still about a third the cost of the least expensive of the misters I've tried. And there are some oil mister that cost a lot more than what I bought.

To be clear, the price is great -- either free or $4.50. But what I like most, is that that it's the best oil mister I used. By far.

There are probably others that work well, too. Parkay has a vegetable oil spray for even less, $3.50. I haven't tried it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did the job. But I've regularly used the I Can't Believe It's Not Butter spray, so I had an empty bottle at the ready for free.

And it worked. Wonderfully.