Mustard Oil: The Complete Guide to Cooking & Uses

Mustard oil has the strongest culinary identity of any Indian cooking oil — pungent, bold, and built for tadka, pickles and the robust cooking of North and East India.

What it is: oil mechanically pressed from mustard seeds. At PhudG that means a traditional wooden ghani, temperatures below 45°C, then natural settling and filtration. Nothing else.

The pungency is natural — it comes from compounds in the seed itself. Heating the oil until it just smokes softens the sharpness and rounds out the flavour before anything else goes in the pan.

Best uses: tadka for dals, pickles and achaar, fish curries like shorshe mach, sarson ka saag, and any sabzi that can carry a bold base.

Mustard oil is also unusual among Indian cooking oils for its natural Omega-3 content — our black mustard oil tested at 11.7 g per 100 g, and the lab report is downloadable from the product page.

If black mustard feels too strong for everyday cooking, yellow mustard oil is the milder sibling — same family, gentler pungency.