Which Cooking Oil Should You Actually Use?
The Question Nobody Answers Clearly
Every few years a different oil becomes the villain and a different one becomes the cure. Ghee was killing us, then ghee was healing us. Coconut oil was a superfood, then it was worse than butter. Refined oil was modern and clean, then it was poison.
I spent a long time confused by this, and the confusion had a cost — I simply bought whatever was on offer.
When I finally worked through it, the conclusion was less dramatic than any of the headlines. How much oil you use matters more than which oil you use, and how you heat it matters more than what it is called on the front of the tin.
But within that, some choices are genuinely better than others. Here is what I settled on.
Smoke Point: The Thing That Actually Matters
This is the single most useful concept, and almost nobody talks about it.
Every oil has a temperature at which it starts to break down and smoke. Past that point it produces free radicals and aldehydes, and it develops a bitter taste. A good oil heated past its smoke point is worse than a mediocre oil used correctly.
Approximate smoke points:
- Ghee — 250°C. The highest of anything in an Indian kitchen
- Refined sunflower / rice bran — 230-250°C
- Mustard oil — 250°C
- Groundnut (peanut) oil — 230°C
- Coconut oil — 175-200°C
- Cold-pressed / extra virgin olive oil — 160-190°C
- Butter — 150°C
What this means in practice:
Deep frying and high-heat tadka — ghee, mustard, groundnut, or a refined oil. This is the one situation where refined oil is genuinely the right tool.
Everyday sabji and normal cooking — almost anything works; you rarely exceed 180°C.
Salads, drizzling, finishing — extra virgin olive oil, cold-pressed oils. Never heat these hard.
The mistake I was making was using expensive cold-pressed oil for deep frying, which destroyed exactly the compounds I had paid extra for.
Refined vs Cold-Pressed, Honestly
Refined oil is extracted with heat and usually a chemical solvent, then bleached and deodorised. This gives it a high smoke point, a long shelf life, no smell, and a low price. It also strips out most of the antioxidants, vitamin E and flavour compounds.
Cold-pressed (kachi ghani) oil is crushed mechanically at low temperature. It keeps its nutrients, aroma and colour. It has a lower smoke point, a shorter shelf life, and costs considerably more.
The honest position: refined oil is not poison, and cold-pressed oil is not medicine. Refined oil is a processed product that does one job — high heat — very well.
What I do is keep both, and use each for what it is good at. Cold-pressed mustard or groundnut for everyday cooking where the flavour is welcome, and a refined oil for the rare occasions I deep fry. Buying only the expensive one and then abusing it with heat was the worst of both worlds.
One thing to genuinely avoid: vanaspati and partially hydrogenated fat. This is where industrial trans fat lives, and trans fat is the one category with no safe level. Check the ingredient list on packaged snacks, biscuits and bakery items — it is far more common there than in home kitchens.
The Oils in an Indian Kitchen
Mustard oil — Traditional across the north and east, and genuinely one of the better options. High smoke point, good fatty acid profile, distinctive pungency. The old practice of heating it until it just smokes before cooking mellows the sharpness. Widely used and long-established in Indian cooking.
Groundnut oil — The workhorse of western and southern India. High smoke point, neutral flavour, reasonably priced. Probably the most versatile single oil you can keep.
Ghee — Highest smoke point of all, rich in butyrate, and it makes food taste better than anything else on this list. It is still concentrated fat at about 900 calories per 100 g, so quantity is the issue, not quality. I use one to two teaspoons a day and consider it well spent.
Coconut oil — Standard across Kerala and the coastal south. High in saturated fat, which remains genuinely debated rather than settled. Fine as part of a varied diet; I would not treat it as a health supplement.
Sesame (til) oil — Common in the south and in Ayurvedic practice. Good profile, distinctive flavour, moderate smoke point.
Rice bran oil — Neutral, high smoke point, increasingly popular. A reasonable all-rounder.
Olive oil — Excellent nutritionally, but extra virgin is for finishing and low-heat cooking, not for tadka. Also expensive for Indian volumes of cooking. Adulteration is common, so buy from a source you trust.
The Rules That Made the Real Difference
None of these are about which tin you buy.
1. Measure it. This was my biggest single correction. I poured oil by eye and was using close to double what I believed. One tablespoon is 120 calories. Three tablespoons across a day, unnoticed, is 360 calories — enough on its own to stall weight loss entirely. I now use a spoon, not the bottle.
A reasonable target for a family of four is half a litre to one litre per month, total. Many households use three or four times that.
2. Never reuse frying oil. Each reheating cycle degrades it further and raises the level of harmful compounds. The oil left after making pakoras should be thrown away, not stored under the counter for next week. This is standard practice in many kitchens and it is genuinely worth breaking.
3. Rotate your oils. No single oil has an ideal fatty acid profile. Using two or three across the month gets you a better balance than optimising for one.
4. Store it properly. Dark, cool, tightly closed, away from the stove. Light and heat oxidise oil in the bottle. If it smells sharp or bitter, it has gone rancid — discard it.
5. Buy smaller tins. A 15-litre tin is cheaper per litre and will be half-oxidised before you finish it.
What I Actually Keep
Three things, and that is all.
Groundnut or mustard oil for everyday cooking, in a one-litre tin, measured with a spoon.
Ghee, homemade where possible, one to two teaspoons a day — on roti, in dal, for tempering.
A small bottle of extra virgin olive oil for salads and anything uncooked.
I stopped buying: vanaspati, anything advertising itself as a heart-health miracle, and the giant discounted tin that sits open for four months.
The conclusion I would offer, having gone in expecting to find a best oil: there isn't one. There is a reasonable oil used in a reasonable quantity at a reasonable temperature, and that turns out to matter far more than the argument everyone is having on the internet.
This is my reading and my experience, not medical advice — if you have a diagnosed heart or lipid condition, your doctor's guidance on fats should override anything here.