Kachi Ghani Mustard Oil

Details

Mustard seed from the Bharatpur and Alwar belt in Rajasthan, pressed cold in an expeller and filtered, and nothing after that. Kachi Ghani is not a piece of marketing language, it is a labelling term with a standard behind it: pressed without heat and sold unrefined, which is why the oil is dark amber and stings the nose. This oil needs testing more than anything else on the shelf, and the reason is argemone. Argemone mexicana seed looks close enough to mustard seed to travel with it into the press, and the oil it yields carries sanguinarine, which causes epidemic dropsy. It swells the legs, damages the heart and it has killed people in this country. The Delhi outbreak in 1998 is the one that is remembered, and it was mustard oil. The second cheat is duller and constant: cheap refined oil, palmolein or rice bran or cottonseed, blended in, and the pungency the blend loses propped back up. Both are visible in a laboratory. The argemone spot test with nitric acid catches the first and a chromatographic screen for sanguinarine confirms it. Allyl isothiocyanate is the compound that makes mustard oil pungent and it is measured as a number, so a blended oil reads low. Erucic acid share catches the same blend from the other side.

• No argemone oil, spot test and sanguinarine screen negative on every lot
• No palmolein, rice bran, cottonseed or any other oil blended in
• No refining, no bleaching, no deodourising, no winterising
• No added allyl isothiocyanate to fake the pungency back into a blend
• No antioxidant, no TBHQ, no added colour
• It is sharp enough to catch the back of the throat, and most Indian cooking wants it smoked first, heated until it just fumes and then taken off the flame
• It is dark amber, it throws a little sediment and it clouds and thickens in a cold kitchen, all of which is an unrefined oil behaving normally