Mustard oil and mustard seeds in Indian cooking

Mustard oil is pressed from mustard seeds. It is golden, with a sharp smell and a pungent taste, and in India it is used for frying, marinades and pickles. Mustard seeds (rai in Hindi) are fried in hot fat at the start of cooking. In Polish shops, look for "olej musztardowy" (mustard oil) and "gorczyca" or "nasiona gorczycy" (mustard seeds).

Mustard oil (sarson ka tel)

Mustard oil is the traditional cooking fat of eastern and northern India: Bengal, Bihar and Punjab, and also Nepal and Bangladesh. In Hindi it is sarson ka tel, and "sarso oil" is a common spelling on packs.

On labels you will see the words kachi ghani. They mean oil cold-pressed in the traditional way. This oil has the strongest smell and taste.

What mustard oil is used for:

• Pickles (achar). Mango, lime, chilli or cauliflower in mustard oil and spices are classics of North Indian cooking.
• Bengali fish. For example fish in a ground mustard sauce (shorshe).
• Sarson ka saag. A Punjabi dish of mustard greens, often served with maize-flour flatbreads.
• Marinades. Mustard oil goes into marinades for tikka and tandoori.
• Aloo bharta. Mashed potato with raw onion, chilli and a drop of mustard oil.

In traditional cooking, the oil is heated in the pan until it just starts to smoke, then cooled for a moment before the spices go in. This softens the sharp smell.

Read the label

In Indian food shops, two kinds of product stand side by side: mustard oil for cooking and mustard oil for body and hair (for example from Dabur). The second is a cosmetic, not a food oil. Before you buy a bottle for cooking, check what the label says. On Polish labels, "spożywczy" means food grade, and "do włosów" or "do ciała" means for hair or body.

Mustard seeds (rai)

The seeds come from the same plants that table mustard is made from. Indian cooking uses three kinds of seed:

Polish supermarkets mostly sell yellow mustard seed ("gorczyca biała"), used for pickling cucumbers. For tadka, look for brown or black seeds in an Indian shop.

How to use mustard seeds: tadka (tempering)

1. Heat a tablespoon of oil or ghee in a small pan.
2. Add a teaspoon of mustard seeds. Cover with a lid, because the seeds will pop.
3. When they stop popping (after a few seconds), add other spices: curry leaves, dried chillies, cumin, a pinch of asafoetida.
4. Pour the hot fat and spices over dal, sambar, raita or curry.

The seeds must pop in hot fat. Raw, unfried seeds are hard and bitter. Ground mustard mixed with water makes a hot paste that goes into Bengali sauces.

Mustard seed is also one of the five spices in the Bengali blend panch phoron, with cumin, fennel, fenugreek and nigella.

What to use instead of mustard oil

If a recipe asks for mustard oil and you have none, use rapeseed or sunflower oil with a pinch of ground mustard. The taste will be milder. In Indian pickles, though, it is hard to replace, because it gives them their character.

Where to buy mustard oil and mustard seeds

Mustard oil is on the Fortune Kachi Ghani mustard oil 500 ml page. Mustard seeds include TRS brown mustard seeds and Heera black mustard seeds. Little India has shops in Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław and Gdańsk and ships online orders.