Which cold-pressed oil should you cook with? A guide by Indian dish
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Short answer: groundnut for deep frying, sesame for South Indian food, mustard for Bengali and North Indian cooking, coconut for Kerala dishes, sunflower or safflower when you want something mild. Flaxseed should never be heated at all.
Unrefined oils each keep the character of the seed they came from. That is the whole point of buying them, and it is also why swapping one for another changes the dish.
Groundnut oil — the one to fry in
Also sold as peanut oil, moongphali ka tel, kadalai ennai. Handles high heat better than most unrefined oils, which makes it the sensible choice for deep frying — pooris, bhaji, vadai, anything that goes into a full pan.
It has a definite roasted-groundnut smell that carries into the food. In Gujarati and Maharashtrian cooking that is the expected taste, not a flaw. If you are frying for people who are not expecting it, warn them.
Sesame oil — the South Indian default
Known as chekku ennai, nallennai, gingelly, or til ka tel. Note that this is the pale, raw-pressed kind, not the dark toasted sesame oil used in East Asian cooking — they are not interchangeable.
Use it for tempering, for the oil that goes into pickles, for rice dishes, for anything Tamil, Andhra or Karnataka. It is also the traditional oil for oil baths and hair. Nutty, warm, and assertive enough to notice.
Mustard oil — Bengali, Bihari, North Indian
Sarson ka tel, kachi ghani. The most opinionated oil on this list: pungent, sharp, faintly stinging in the nose when raw. Essential to Bengali fish, to mustard-based gravies, to most pickles, and to a lot of Bihari and Punjabi cooking.
The traditional technique is to bring it almost to smoking and then let it cool a little before cooking — that knocks the raw edge off. Cooking with it straight from the bottle tastes harsher than most people expect.
Coconut oil — Kerala, and everything else
For Kerala and coastal Karnataka cooking, and also the one bottle in the house with a second job: hair, skin, oil pulling. Wood-pressed coconut oil is edible grade, so the same bottle genuinely does both.
It sets solid below about 24°C. That is physics, not spoilage — stand the bottle in warm water or just scoop it.
Sunflower and safflower — when you want it to disappear
The mildest oils we press. Sunflower is the neutral one: use it when the dish should taste of the dish. Safflower — kardai, kusum — is a quieter, slightly lighter option and traditional across Maharashtra and Karnataka.
These are the right starting point if your household is used to refined oil and you do not want the switch to be a shock.
Flaxseed oil — never heat it
Worth its own warning. Flaxseed oil degrades at low temperatures and turns unpleasant. Use it cold: over a salad, stirred into curd, spooned over food already on the plate. Keep it refrigerated and finish it quickly.
If you are switching from refined oil
Three things that surprise people, all of them normal:
- The smell. Refined oil is deodorised to smell of nothing. Unrefined oil smells of its seed, in the bottle and in the kitchen.
- You may need less. Stronger-tasting oil goes further in a dish. Start with three-quarters of what you would normally use.
- It will not last two years. About six months, cap closed, away from the stove. Buy a size you will actually finish.
Still not sure?
Tell us what you cook most often and we will tell you where to start — including when the honest answer is a smaller bottle first. WhatsApp +91 74004 79330.
Written by the team at Purealth, who press on a wooden ghani in Ghansoli, Navi Mumbai. FSSAI Central Licence 11524998001133. Published 17 September 2026.