Any thoughts on Mustard Oil?

[avendesora]

In the Madhur Jaffrey cookbook I just got, she recommends using mustard oil on occasion. I don't know anything about it from a nutritional standpoint - how traditional would that be? Would that be considered a vegetable/seed oil?

(I'm currently under the impression that most vegetable/seed oils aren't a good idea, like corn, peanut, soy, safflower, etc, but wouldn't olive oil and coconut oil be technically be considered seed oils as well? What about yummy toasted sesame oil? Obviously not all seed oils are alike.)

Thanks,
Aven

[cristeen]

I look at it like this... when I eat that food, is it a fatty food? Corn and soy, obviously not - they're starchy foods. Safflower isn't really a food. And peanut has other issues - it's not so much that peanuts themselves are bad, it's that they're contaminated.

But when you eat olives - they're fatty. Coconut is fatty. Walnuts, sunflower seeds, macadamia nuts, these are all fatty. So these are the sources of fats that I want to use.

As for mustard oil - generally it's used for flavoring kind of like toasted sesame oil, so I wouldn't have a problem using it in small amounts. If you're really worried about it, I'd look into how it's made.