What is kardai oil? Safflower oil in English, Marathi and your kitchen

If you grew up in Maharashtra, you know this oil by one name only. If you are trying to buy it online, or explain it to a friend from another state, you need the other one. Kardai oil is safflower oil — the same seed, the same press, two languages. Here is the full picture: what the plant is, what it is called across India, and — because we would rather be accurate than convenient — what this oil is honestly for in a kitchen.

What is kardai oil called in English?

Safflower oil. Kardai (करडई) is the Marathi name for safflower, Carthamus tinctorius — a thistle-like plant with spiny leaves and orange-yellow flowers, grown as a winter crop on the dry Deccan plateau. The seeds look like small, angular white sunflower seeds, and the oil pressed from them is what Marathi households have always called kardai tel.

So if you have been searching for "kardai oil in English", the answer is one word: safflower. Kardai oil, karadi oil, kardi oil, safflower oil — one seed, one oil.

What is kardai called in other Indian languages?

The names travel with the crop, and most of them descend from the Sanskrit kusumbha:

The Hindi name is why the same oil sometimes sells as kusum oil in the north. Do not let the spelling variations put you off — karadai, kardi and kardai are all the same Marathi word written three ways.

Where does kardai belong in Indian cooking?

Safflower is a crop of the dry belt. Marathwada and Vidarbha in Maharashtra, with the adjoining districts of north Karnataka, grow most of India's kardai — it is sown after the monsoon and stands through the winter on fields too dry for fussier crops. In the kitchens of that belt it has been the quiet everyday oil for generations: mild, faintly nutty, without the loud character of mustard or the perfume of sesame. A Marathwada koshimbir, a bowl of pithla, a smear on bhakri — that is kardai country.

Is safflower the same as sunflower?

No — and the two get swapped constantly, in shops and on labels, because both yield a pale golden oil and both names start the same way in English. Sunflower is Helianthus annuus, the tall flower that follows the sun — surajmukhi in Hindi. Safflower is Carthamus tinctorius, the spiny Deccan thistle — kardai, kusum. Different plants, different seeds, different oils. If a shopkeeper hands you sunflower oil when you asked for kardai, the seed name settles it: kardai and kusum always mean safflower, never sunflower.

How hot can kardai oil go?

Not very — and this is the part most sellers skip. Unrefined, Truly Cold Pressed safflower oil smokes at about 107°C / 225°F, the lowest working temperature of any culinary oil we press, level with flaxseed. That makes kardai a low-heat and raw-use oil, full stop. It is not a frying oil, and it is not a tadka oil either: a tadka pan sails past 107°C well before the first mustard seed pops.

The 232°C figure quoted all over the internet for safflower oil belongs to the refined version, which has been stripped precisely so it can take that heat. Ours has not, and we will not borrow the refined number to sell the unrefined oil. Smoke points of Indian cooking oils sets out every oil we press against the jobs a kitchen actually does.

So what should you use kardai oil for?

Everything where the oil arrives late or never meets the flame:

• Koshimbir and salads. Kardai is mild enough to dress cucumber, tomato and dahi-based koshimbirs without shouting over them.
• Finishing dal, pithla and zunka. Stir a spoonful in after the flame is off. The oil stays whole and the dish picks up its gentle nuttiness.
• Chutneys and thecha. A traditional carrier for green chilli and groundnut chutneys in the safflower belt.
• Kneading into dough. Bhakri and thalipeeth take a spoon of kardai in the dough for softness.
• The lowest flame only. Wilting greens or warming leftovers on the gentlest heat — briefly, and never a hot pan.

What does kardai oil taste like?

Clean, light and quietly nutty. If mustard is the loudest oil in an Indian kitchen, kardai is the quietest — which is exactly why the region that grows it uses it raw, where its subtlety is a feature. It carries other flavours rather than adding its own opinion, and it leaves no greasy heaviness behind on a salad.

What does kardai oil contain?

Traditional Indian safflower is a linoleic-type seed, so the oil is dominated by polyunsaturated fat — mostly linoleic acid, an omega-6 — with a smaller share of monounsaturates. That composition is also the plain chemistry behind the low-heat rule: polyunsaturated fats are the least heat-stable of the fats, which is why this oil belongs in the koshimbir and not the kadhai.

Where can you buy genuine kardai oil?

We press Truly Cold Pressed safflower oil from kardai seed in a wooden ghani, slowly and without heat, the way the oil was made in the villages that named it. It is unfiltered, so a little sediment at the bottom of the bottle is normal, and because it carries no preservatives it keeps for 4 to 6 months — buy it in quantities you will actually use.

And if what you really came looking for is an everyday cooking and tadka oil, kardai is the wrong tool — we would rather tell you that than sell you the wrong bottle. Truly Cold Pressed groundnut oil is our everyday sabzi and tadka oil, and the oil comparison page puts all of them side by side so you can choose by the job, not the label.