Cooking
Cooking Oils: Choosing With Care
A calm guide to choosing cooking oils with care: what the labels mean, and a few single-ingredient oils worth keeping close.
Cooking · Skin Rituals
Mustard Seed Oil
Brassica juncea · Brassica nigra
A pungent seed oil; in the US most are 'external use only', but a low-erucic food-grade option exists.
Also known as sarson ka tel, rai oil, kadugu.
Texture: medium, mobileScent: pungent, sharp, horseradish-like
Origin
India, Bangladesh, Canada, and Australia.
Mustard seed oil is pressed from the seeds of Brassica/Sinapis mustard plants. It is prized for a sharp, horseradish-like pungency (from allyl isothiocyanate) and a high smoke point.
The key US issue is erucic acid. Because of erucic-acid content, the FDA does not permit most imported mustard oils to be sold for food use, so they are labeled 'for external use / massage only.' A small number of purpose-bred, low-erucic-acid oils are produced specifically as food-grade.
This makes labeling the single most important thing to verify per SKU: a food-grade, low-erucic product can be cooked with; an 'external use only' product must not be eaten, regardless of how it is used elsewhere in the world.
Skin & Allergen Notes
ContainsMustard
Mustard is a regulated allergen (EU/UK food-allergen Annex II).
Traditional Uses
The mustard seed is a celebrated biblical image of small beginnings and great growth. Mustard seed oil has a long culinary and folk-massage tradition across South Asia.
Modern Uses
Mustard oil is a staple cooking and tempering oil in South Asian kitchens and is used in traditional scalp and body massage. In the US, regulatory status splits sharply between food-grade and external-use-only products.
Our Approved Mustard Seed Oil
Yandilla
Best for cooking
A genuinely food-grade exception in a category that is otherwise 'external use only' in the US: a purpose-bred, low-erucic-acid, cold-pressed mustard oil in glass. Clean, bright,…
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