Mustard Oil substitute

Substitutes for Mustard Oil with ratios

1. 2Canola or rapeseed oil

   Different taste

   Use the same amount by volume

   The nearest botanical relative, pressed from a Brassica seed like mustard is, and the single-bottle answer.

   What changes

   Best for

   shallow and deep frying, everyday Indian cooking where mustard oil is the default fat, pakoras and fritters, any recipe where mustard oil is doing the frying rather than the flavouring

   Choose this when convenience matters. It shares a faint grassy, very slightly cabbage-like note when heated, which sits under Indian food more naturally than sunflower or corn oil does, and its smoke point is high enough for anything. What it completely lacks is the pungency, so a Bengali mustard fish made with it tastes clean, round and a bit polite, and noticeably less alive. Adding half a teaspoon of mustard powder off the heat fixes most of that.

2. 3Ghee

   Different taste

   Use the same amount by volume

   Clarified butter cooked until the milk solids toast, traditional across North India and Kashmir.

   What changes

   Best for

   Kashmiri dishes such as dum aloo and rogan josh, dals and rich vegetable curries, temperings and tarka, parathas and breads

   Not a mimic but a genuine alternative that many of these regional cuisines already use interchangeably. It swings the dish in a completely different direction: nutty, sweet, buttery and rounded where mustard oil is sharp and bracing, so a Kashmiri dish made with ghee tastes plush and comforting rather than pointed. Excellent food, different food. Its smoke point is high, and it will not carry mustard heat, so add mustard powder separately if you want it.

3. 4Untoasted sesame oil (gingelly or til oil)

   Different taste

   Use the same amount by volume

   The pale, cold-pressed sesame oil used as an everyday cooking fat in South India, not the dark toasted kind used in East Asian cooking.

   What changes

   Best for

   pickles and achar-style preparations, South Indian vegetable dishes, temperings, marinades

   A good regional alternative with real character of its own: mildly nutty and slightly bitter, with enough presence that the dish does not taste like it is missing something the way a neutral oil can. It has no pungency at all and it is sweeter and softer than mustard oil, so a pickle made with it tastes mellow rather than fierce. Make sure you buy the light untoasted oil; the dark toasted sesame oil is far too assertive and will dominate everything.

4. 5Neutral oil plus horseradish or wasabi paste

   Close match

   Use 2 tablespoons neutral oil plus ¼ teaspoon prepared horseradish or wasabi for every 2 tablespoons mustard oil, stirred in off the heat

   A shortcut to the exact nasal heat, using another plant in the same family that produces the same class of pungent compounds.

   What changes

   Best for

   cold dressings and dipping sauces, finishing a curry off the heat, raw mustard-oil drizzles over salads or bhelpuri, marinades

   Surprisingly effective, because horseradish, wasabi and mustard all deliver that sinus-clearing sensation through closely related compounds. It works best raw or added at the last second, since heat destroys the pungency within a minute or two. Prepared horseradish brings vinegar and sometimes cream with it, which brightens a dressing and can be wrong in a dry-ish curry, so taste as you go and start small.

5. 6Rice bran, grapeseed or sunflower oil

   Different taste

   Use the same amount by volume

   Plain high-smoke-point oils used purely as the frying medium, with the mustard character abandoned.

   What changes

   Best for

   deep frying, recipes where mustard oil was chosen for heat tolerance rather than taste, large-batch cooking, anyone who dislikes mustard oil's pungency

   The honest position on these is that they do the fat's job and nothing else. Fish fried in rice bran oil browns beautifully and tastes of fish; the same fish fried in mustard oil tastes of mustard oil, which in Bengali cooking is much of the point. Choose these when you want the dish to work rather than to taste authentic, and expect a cleaner, flatter, more Western-tasting result.