During my teens, my dad went through a phase of pickling everything he could. It seemed like every jar he could get his hands on would inevitably be stuffed with spiced vegetables—everything from eggplants and carrots to fruit like green mangoes—and set on our windowsills to allow the pickles to cure in the sunlight., as they’re commonly known—are different than the pickles most non-Indian people are familiar with.
Mustard oil is an extremely popular oil among home cooks in China, Russia, and in South Asia, particularly in the northern Indian state of West Bengal as well as in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Unlike oils that are merely infused with mustard seeds, true mustard oil is the fat extracted from the seeds of the mustard plant—in India, the oil is extracted from black mustard seeds fromBrassica junceaJust like most cooking oils, mustard oil has a diverse set of applications.
To understand why mustard oil’s sale is restricted, we need to take a closer look at its composition. All fats and oils are made up of a combination of glycerol and a mixture of molecules called fatty acids, and the composition of the fatty acids in a given oil or fat determines how it behaves. For example, fats that have a high proportion of saturated* fatty acids—animal fats, like lard and tallow, and some plant-derived fats, like coconut oil—will behave like a solid at room temperature.
Mustard oil is rich in unsaturated fatty acids, but it also contains a special type of fatty acid called erucic acid, which lies at the center of the controversy surrounding the oil. Seeds from the brassica family of plants, which includes rapeseed and mustard, in addition to cabbage and kale, all contain varying amounts of erucic acid. Early experimental studies on animals in the 1950s suggested that erucic acid possibly had a role in the development of heart disease.
You know someone somewhere - Well, I tried deep frying in mustard oil and now I'm dead...
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