Palm Kernel Oil substitute

Best substitute

Refined coconut oil

Use the same amount as the palm kernel oil you are replacing

Best for chocolate-style coatings and compound chocolate

Close match

For coatings, confectionery and anything that needs to snap and then melt in the mouth, refined coconut oil is the closest swap at 1:1 - it is chemically the nearest relative and behaves almost identically. For baking, frying or a general-purpose solid fat, vegetable shortening at 1:1 is the practical answer. First be sure which oil your recipe means: palm kernel oil is not palm oil. Palm oil is red-orange, tastes savoury and earthy, and is what West African stews want; palm kernel oil is white, tastes of almost nothing, and is there for hardness and melt behaviour. Swapping one for the other is the single most common mistake with this ingredient.

Other palm kernel oil substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Vegetable shortening
Different texture
Use the same amount
Shortening is engineered to be exactly what palm kernel oil often is in a recipe: a bland, plastic solid fat that stays workable across a wide temperature range.
What changes
It creams, it fries, and it keeps baked goods tender. What it does not do is melt cleanly - shortening has a broad, waxy melting range, so a coating made from it coats your palate rather than disappearing off it. Perfectly good in a cookie, noticeably greasy in a candy shell.
Best for
cookies, pastry and cake batters, frostings and fillings, deep frying, greasing and general-purpose solid fat
The right choice for baking, the wrong choice for anything you eat as a thin coating. If you can only find one solid fat, this is the most useful one to have.
3Cocoa butter
Close match
Use the same amount by weight for coatings
The luxury answer for confectionery.
What changes
Cocoa butter is even sharper in its melt than palm kernel oil, which is why real chocolate snaps so cleanly, and it brings a mild, pleasant chocolatey-creamy note instead of nothing. The catch is temper: cocoa butter needs to be melted and cooled through the right temperature curve or it sets streaky and soft, whereas palm kernel and coconut fats forgive you completely. It also costs several times as much.
Best for
real chocolate work and enrobing, high-end truffle shells, white chocolate style coatings, anything where snap and gloss matter most
Choose deodorised cocoa butter if you want a neutral flavour. Budget an extra ten minutes for tempering, or accept a duller finish.
4Butter or ghee
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount for cooking, not for coatings
In West African and Southeast Asian cooking where palm kernel oil is simply the frying or braising fat, butter and ghee work, with ghee the better pick because it has no water or milk solids to burn.
What changes
Both add obvious dairy richness, so a stew made with ghee tastes rounder and more buttery and less clean than one made with palm kernel oil. In confectionery they fail outright: butter is around 16 percent water and will not set to a firm, snappy shell.
Best for
frying and sauteing, braises and stews, rice dishes, flatbreads
Ghee's smoke point is high, around 480F/250C, so it fries better than butter. Neither is an option for a vegan recipe.
5Neutral liquid oil (canola, sunflower, groundnut)
Different texture
Use the same amount for cooking only
If palm kernel oil is being used to fry or to enrich a savoury dish, any refined neutral oil does the job at 1:1 and nobody will notice.
What changes
The flavour outcome is essentially the same because there was no flavour to lose. What you cannot do is use a liquid oil where the recipe depends on the fat being solid - the mixture will stay soft, weep oil, or refuse to set at all. This is the swap that breaks the most no-bake recipes.
Best for
frying and sauteing, West African soups and stews that call for the white oil, marinades, any recipe where the fat stays liquid
Groundnut, or peanut, oil is the most traditional neutral oil in West African cooking. Avoid this swap entirely in coatings, bars and fillings.
6Palm oil (red palm oil)
Taste and texture differ
not interchangeable
Worth listing precisely so you do not use it by mistake.
What changes
Red palm oil comes from the fruit pulp, is deep orange from carotenoids, and has a strong savoury, slightly violet-earthy flavour that dominates whatever it touches. Substituted into a candy coating it turns the sweet orange and makes it taste of stew. It is also softer and semi-solid rather than hard. The one place they overlap is West African cooking, where a recipe asking for palm oil genuinely wants that colour and flavour, and palm kernel oil would leave the dish pale and bland.
Best for
West African stews, egusi and jollof where the recipe asks for red oil, dishes that want orange colour, nothing sweet or pale
If your recipe is West African and the oil is described as red, it means palm oil, not palm kernel oil. If it is described as white or is going into confectionery, it means palm kernel oil, and coconut oil is your substitute.

What is Palm Kernel Oil?

Palm Kernel Oil is Palm kernel oil, also called palm kernel fat or PKO, is the hard white fat pressed from the seed inside the oil palm fruit, and unlike the orange palm oil pressed from the fruit's flesh it is nearly flavourless, very high in saturated fat, and solid at room temperature with a sharp melting point just below body heat.

Cooking tips

Decide first whether the fat's job is flavour or physics. In West African cooking palm kernel oil is usually just the cooking fat and any neutral oil substitutes cleanly; in confectionery it is there for a hard set and a fast melt, and only coconut oil, cocoa butter or a purpose-made coating fat will reproduce that.
Coconut oil sets slightly softer than palm kernel oil at room temperature, so if you swap it into a coated sweet or a bar, keep the finished item in the fridge and serve it cold - the texture is right at 60F/16C and floppy at 80F/27C.
When you melt any of these hard fats, keep them under about 120F/50C and stir. Overheated coconut oil and cocoa butter both set grainy afterwards, and no amount of chilling fixes it.
Palm kernel oil is very high in saturated fat, around 80 percent, which is exactly why it is firm. Any substitute that is genuinely lower in saturated fat will also be genuinely softer, so there is no swap that keeps the snap and drops the saturates.
You will find palm kernel oil in African and Caribbean groceries and in cake-decorating shops, where it is often sold as a coating fat, hard palm kernel fat or by a brand name for compound chocolate.

Frequently asked questions

Is palm kernel oil the same as palm oil?

No, and this is the mistake worth avoiding. They come from different parts of the same fruit. Palm oil is pressed from the orange flesh, is red and strongly flavoured, and is what West African recipes usually mean by palm oil. Palm kernel oil is pressed from the hard seed inside, is white, nearly tasteless, and much harder. They are not interchangeable in either direction without changing the dish substantially.

What can I use for a chocolate coating that needs palm kernel oil?

Refined coconut oil at 1:1 is the closest and easiest. Cocoa butter gives a better snap and a cleaner melt but needs tempering. Vegetable shortening will hold the coating together but tastes waxy in the mouth, so use it only if nothing else is available.

Can I just leave it out?

In a fried or braised savoury dish, yes - replace it with any cooking oil, or reduce the fat somewhat if you want. In a coating, filling or no-bake bar, no. The hard fat is the structure holding the whole thing together, and leaving it out gives you a wet, unset mixture rather than a slightly leaner one.

Why does my coconut oil coating go soft when palm kernel oil did not?

Because coconut oil's melting point is a few degrees lower, around 76F/24C against the low 80sF/high 20sC for hardened palm kernel fat. Nothing has gone wrong - just keep the finished sweets refrigerated, or blend in a spoonful of melted cocoa butter per cup of coconut oil to firm them up.

Is there a more sustainable substitute?

Coconut oil is the usual answer for people avoiding palm products, and it performs closest. It is worth knowing that coconut has its own land-use footprint, so the honest framing is that you are choosing a different set of tradeoffs rather than a clean one. If you want to keep using palm kernel oil, look for certified sustainable sourcing on the label.

Related substitutes

More oils & fats substitutes

Palm Kernel Oil substitute

Other palm kernel oil substitutes

2Vegetable shortening

3Cocoa butter

4Butter or ghee

5Neutral liquid oil (canola, sunflower, groundnut)

6Palm oil (red palm oil)