Smoke points of Indian cooking oils

Smoke point is the single most useful number when choosing a cooking oil, and it is also the number most often quoted wrongly. This is the full reference for the oils we press, with the figures our own product pages carry.

What are the smoke points of Indian cooking oils?

They range from about 107°C to 250°C. Mustard oil and ghee sit at the top at 250°C and are the only fats here that comfortably take deep-frying heat. Sesame and coconut sit in the middle at 177°C. Safflower and flaxseed, at roughly 107°C, sit at the bottom — safflower is a low-heat oil and flaxseed should never be heated at all.

What is a smoke point?

It is the temperature at which an oil stops holding together and begins to visibly smoke. Below it the oil is stable and carries flavour. Above it the fat breaks down, the flavour turns acrid, and the food takes that on. The smoke point is a property of the specific oil in front of you, not of the seed in general.

Which is why the same seed can produce two very different numbers, depending on what was done to it after pressing.

Why are the smoke points quoted online higher than yours?

Because most published figures are for the refined version of the oil, and ours are not refined. Refining removes the free fatty acids, sediment, colour and aromatic compounds that lower a smoke point, so the refined figure is genuinely higher — it is simply a different product.

Three cases where this trips people up constantly:

• Groundnut oil. The widely quoted 227°C is the refined figure. Unrefined, ours sits at about 160°C.
• Safflower oil. The quoted 232°C is refined. Unrefined, ours sits at about 107°C — a low-heat oil, best used raw.
• Almond oil. The quoted 216°C is refined. Ours is not a frying oil at any temperature and is best used raw.

If a figure looks generous for an unrefined oil, it usually belongs to a refined one. Wood pressed compared with refined oil explains what each stage of refining removes.

Which oils can you deep-fry in?

Black mustard, yellow mustard and A2 Gir cow ghee — all three at 250°C. Indian deep frying runs at roughly 175°C to 190°C, so those three leave a cushion of sixty degrees or more. Nothing else we press has that headroom, and using a 160°C oil in a kadhai will take it past its limit.

Which oil should you deep-fry in? goes into how much reuse a frying oil will take.

Which oils should never be heated?

Flaxseed above all — at about 107°C it is below the temperature of a warm pan, and heat destroys both its flavour and its structure. Kalonji is a raw-use oil. Walnut turns bitter over heat. Almond is best raw. Safflower sits at the same 107°C as flaxseed, so keep it to a low flame and raw use. Castor is for external use and is not a cooking oil in any form.

These are finishing oils. Drizzle them over food that is already cooked, or use them cold in a dressing, and they do the job they are good at.

Does a higher smoke point make an oil better?

No. It makes it better at heat, and that is one job out of many. A high smoke point is what you want in a kadhai and irrelevant in a salad. Flaxseed has the lowest smoke point of anything we press and is one of the most valuable oils in the range, used correctly.

Match the oil to the pan rather than buying the highest number on the page. You can see the whole range side by side in our wood pressed oils, or work through them one at a time on the oil comparison page.

What temperature does Indian cooking actually reach?

Less than most people assume. A tadka is brief and hot but shallow. Sautéing sits around 120°C to 150°C. Shallow frying a paratha runs near 160°C to 175°C. Only deep frying pushes reliably to 175°C to 190°C and holds there for a long stretch.

That is why a 177°C oil like sesame or coconut handles the great majority of everyday Indian cooking without complaint, even though it would be the wrong choice for a batch of pooris.