Three Thousand Years of Pressing
Sesame (Sesamum indicum) is one of humanity's oldest cultivated crops — believed to have been domesticated in India over 5,000 years ago. Tamil Sangam literature mentions nallennai (sesame oil) as a cooking fat, lamp fuel, and medicinal substance. Ancient temple inscriptions from Tamil Nadu record sesame oil as a tax commodity — traded, stored, and gifted with the seriousness of gold. The wooden oil press (chekku), drawn by bullocks to crush sesame seeds at low heat, produces an oil fundamentally different from the pale, refined sesame oil available in mainstream supermarkets.
The Difference Cold Pressing Makes
Industrial sesame oil is solvent-extracted at high temperature, then bleached and deodorised. The result is a pale, neutral-tasting oil that has lost most of the sesamol, sesamin, and sesaminol — the unique antioxidant compounds that give authentic gingelly oil its distinctive character and documented health properties. Cold-pressed (chekku) gingelly oil retains these compounds in full. It has a smoke point of around 210°C, making it suitable for most Indian cooking methods, and a flavour profile so complex that food scientists have identified over 200 volatile aroma compounds in it.
Its Role in Tamil Cooking
Gingelly oil is the foundational cooking fat in Tamil Nadu. It is used for the tadka in sambar and rasam, for shallow-frying medu vada and murukku, for the daily massage of pickles, and for making kuzhambu (thick tamarind-based gravies). On Karthigai Deepam (the Tamil festival of lights), thousands of clay lamps filled with gingelly oil are lit across Tamil Nadu. On Saturdays in many Tamil homes, sesame oil is offered to the Navagraha deities. This is a fat with cultural weight — not just culinary function.
Why It Is Disappearing
Refined sunflower oil and refined coconut oil are cheaper, have a longer shelf life, and a neutral flavour that does not challenge the palate. As Tamil Nadu urbanised rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s, chekku mills — the traditional oil-pressing workshops — closed by the thousands. A generation grew up cooking with refined oil without knowing what nallennai tasted like. In diaspora communities, where access to specialty ingredients was already difficult, gingelly oil became a memory food — something grandmothers used, not something you could source. This is slowly reversing, as food culture becomes more conscious of origin and method.
How to Use It in Your Kitchen
Use cold-pressed gingelly oil where you want its flavour to come through: for the tadka in sambar and rice dishes, for marinating meat, for tossing steamed vegetables, and for making chutneys. For deep frying at very high temperatures, refined coconut oil or neutral oil is more suitable (gingelly oil's compounds degrade above 210°C). Store in a dark glass bottle away from heat — the antioxidants that make it special also make it more sensitive to light and warmth than refined oils. A bottle used within three months will taste noticeably better than one left on a sunlit countertop for a year.
RanaGroupe and Cold-Pressed Oils
RanaGroupe stocks chekku-pressed gingelly oil sourced from small Tamil Nadu producers who still operate traditional presses. We also carry cold-pressed coconut oil from Tamil Nadu. Both are available in home sizes (500ml, 1L) and wholesale quantities (5L, 10L tins) for restaurants and retailers who want to offer authentic Tamil flavour — not the refined substitute.
