Oil is Oil. What's the Big Deal?

Cold and hot-pressed oils - how they're different, and why you should care.

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We are talking all things oil: extraction, adulteration, taste, nutrition - all of it.

Yes, we can hear you think - there's already a ton of information out there.

But we get our hands dirty (literally dirty), making bull-driven oils every day. Bit of a brag, but we know a thing or two about making good oil :) Like what, you ask? Tiny little things like why Ajji only made castor oil early in the morning or why the “edible” oil in your kitchen makes you sicker by the day.

This stuff is straight from our farm, fresh off the Ghana. We want to share everything we know about oils and the Indian kitchen. Ready? Set. Yum!

Most edible oils in the market are extracted using chemicals. You probably think it isn't such a deal-breaker.

Short answer: It is.

The Long version: Oil is mainly made three ways. Each of them impacts the compositional quality, nutritional and physicochemical properties of your cooking oil.

Pressing: A mechanical method for extracting oil from vegetables, nuts and seeds by physical pressure in a screw press at 20,6850 to 68,950 kilopascals, which, of course, generates loads of heat.

(Heat kills the nutritive value of edible oils, always)

Chemical Extraction: Uses a petroleum by-product, usually hexane, to separate oil. Most large commercial oil makers use this method, thanks to its low production cost.

Centrifugation: Oil is made in a decanter that separates seeds from oil in one single continuous process.

Produces a ton of heat too.

One thing they all have in common? Mass production. Another - refinement.

If there's only one thing you take away from this post, let it be this - refined oils stink – period.

They're cheap. They're processed and downright dangerous to your health. Marketed as "heart-healthy", refining exposes edible oils to high temperatures, deodorizer, degumming, dewaxing and bleaching. That's right- *bleach*. Refining produces rancid polyunsaturated fatty acids that oxidize into trans fats (again, bad news). All this smells so bad that they use bleach to deodorize it. Now you know why all refined oils in the market are uniform in taste, smell, appearance, and long shelf lives.

Okay, you get it; refined oils stink. Let's talk about cold-pressed oils now.

In stark contrast, cold pressing makes oil by applying pressure without using heat. This protects the quality, taste and nutritional value of oil. Cold-pressed oils retain healthy antioxidants otherwise damaged during commercial extraction.

But, things get better on our farm. Let us paint a picture of the ancient art of oil making, for you.

One where naturally grown oil seeds sourced from local farms are sun-dried and shelled. Then slowly crushed in a Bull-driven Ghana to make unrefined, unbleached, and undeodorized bottles of goodness. For generations, Ghanas have made oil and fed our villages. We've revived this lost art of oil extraction in a little village in Mandya. Every day we make cold-pressed, raw, single-origin, extra virgin, speciality cooking oils in small batches.

Traditionally bull-driven oil has its nutritive capacity intact as absolutely no heat is generated during the entire process of making it. Why does that matter? Because all of the nutrients present in the seeds actually make it to the oil - vitamins, antioxidants, phospholipids, lecithin and protein, everything. Plus, they carry the taste and aroma of the seeds. Not sodium, hexane, hydroxide, bleaching agents and sodium bicarbonate.

We make oil slowly, mindfully.

Our coconut oil, for example, starts its journey a year before coming home to you. We harvest and shade dry native, naturally grown coconuts for months on our farm. And when summer comes, this Kobbari is sun-dried. Now, our crunchy Kobbari is ready to make some fragrant coconut oil in our Bull-driven ghana. It takes two kilos of Kobbari and two complete hours of continuous crushing to make a batch of this oil. It gets four abundant days of sunlight on our farm to dissipate moisture while keeping its nutritional profile intact. After this, we bottle it up and bring it to your door within five days of extraction. That's how fresh our oil is.

What about castor, you ask? It takes us five kilos of naturally grown castor beans and a whole week to make a single batch of our traditionally boiled castor oil.

Castor or coconut, we don't torture our seeds at high temperatures or subject them to harsh chemicals. Ghanas do not cause the loss of nutritionally viable components like tocopherol and sterols in cooking oils. But the goodness of bull-driven oils doesn't end here. Rich in nutrition and anti-inflammatory properties, they naturally and holistically enhance health and wellness--and that's no surprise, considering how awesome they are for your mind and body.

So there you go. Just a few reasons why the kind of oil you fry those Aloo Bondas in really truly matters.

After all, didn't Hippocrates say let food be thy medicine, like, two thousand years ago?

For our oils and more, go to : https://www.grassrootsorganicstore.com/shop