A bottle labelled sesame oil can be any of three different things: a pale refined oil that smells of nothing, a dark East Asian oil pressed from roasted seed, or the brown-gold unrefined ellenne your ajji kept beside the stove. They are not interchangeable. If you have ever tipped a spoon of the wrong one into a saaru and wondered why it tasted like a stir-fry, this is why.
Ellenne, gingelly, til, nallennai: one seed, many names
Ellenne in Kannada, gingelly in South Indian English, til in Hindi, nallennai in Tamil — all of them mean oil pressed from sesame seed, and the name on the label tells you nothing useful about what is inside. What matters is the processing.
Refined sesame oil is solvent-extracted, bleached through clay and steamed at around 200°C to strip the smell out. That last step is called deodorising, and it is the reason a modern bottle smells of nothing while your grandmother's kitchen smelled of sesame from the doorway. Cold pressed ellenne skips all three steps: the seed is crushed slowly in a wooden gaana, the oil is settled and filtered, and that is the end of it.
Which is why ours is brown-gold rather than pale, smells strongly of sesame, and often leaves a little sediment at the bottom of the bottle. All three are what unrefined oil is supposed to do, not faults.
What it tastes like, and why a little is enough
Unrefined sesame oil is assertive — nutty, faintly bitter at the edge, and it carries through a dish rather than disappearing into it. That is the single most useful thing to know before you cook with it: ellenne is a flavouring oil as much as a cooking medium. You use less of it than you would groundnut or sunflower oil, and you pick dishes where you want sesame in the taste. Pour it into something delicate and it takes over. Pour it into a pickle or a chutney podi and it is the reason the thing works.
Where it belongs
Ogarane and tempering. A spoon of ellenne heated until the mustard seeds crackle gives a seasoning that groundnut oil simply cannot. This is the most common everyday use and the easiest place to start.
Saaru and huli. Finished with sesame oil rather than cooked in it — added at the end, off the heat, so the aroma survives.
Uppinakayi. Sesame oil is the traditional oil for topping pickles across much of South India — it sits as a layer above the pickle, and its strong flavour belongs with lime, mango and chilli.
Chutney podi, and shallow frying. A little stirred into podi before it goes over rice or dosa; fine too for a quick shallow fry where you want the sesame note. Not for a long, hot deep fry — see below.
The oil bath. Outside the kitchen, ellenne is the oil Karnataka families have used for enne snana, the Deepavali oil bath, and for oil pulling. Our honest guide to oil pulling sets out what that practice does and does not do.
Where it does not belong: the deep fry
Unrefined sesame oil has a smoke point around 170–180°C — lower than refined oil from the same seed, because the particles and free fatty acids that refining strips out are exactly what start smoking first. A kadai held at frying heat for twenty minutes will push past that. So for chakli, bondas, a full batch of vadas or anything needing sustained high heat, reach for cold pressed groundnut oil or coconut oil instead. Both are more heat stable, and neither will dominate the taste of what you are frying. Using ellenne there wastes an expensive, strongly flavoured oil and gives you a worse result. We would rather say so than sell you the wrong bottle.
It is not the dark oil from the Chinese aisle
The very dark, intensely nutty bottle sold for Chinese, Korean and Japanese cooking is pressed from roasted seed, and it is a finishing oil used by the half-teaspoon. Cold pressed ellenne is pressed from raw seed: lighter in colour, less concentrated, and usable as an everyday cooking oil in a way toasted oil is not. If a recipe calls for "toasted sesame oil", ours is not a substitute. If it calls for gingelly or til oil, ours is exactly what is meant.
Buying and keeping it
Because ellenne is used in small quantities, most households finish a 500 ml or 1 L bottle comfortably — which matters, because unrefined oil is best used within three to six months of opening. A 15 L tin of an oil you use by the spoon is a false economy; the big tins make sense for groundnut or coconut oil, which a Karnataka kitchen gets through far faster. Every size is listed across the full range of our cold pressed oils.
Keep the bottle capped, in a cool dark cupboard away from the stove and out of sunlight, and pour rather than dipping a wet spoon in. Sesame stays liquid through a Karnataka winter; coconut oil does not, and if yours has gone solid that is entirely normal.
We deliver ellenne across Karnataka, including cold pressed oil delivery in Mysuru, and ship across India. All orders are prepaid.
Frequently asked questions
Is gingelly oil the same as sesame oil?
Yes. Gingelly, ellenne, til and nallennai are regional names for oil pressed from sesame seed. The meaningful difference between bottles is refined versus unrefined, and raw-pressed versus toasted — not the name on the front.
Can I use ellenne as my everyday cooking oil?
You can, but most households do not, because the flavour is strong enough to shape every dish it touches. The usual pattern in a Karnataka kitchen is groundnut or sunflower oil for general cooking and ellenne kept for tempering, pickles, podi and finishing. Our guide to which oil suits which job maps the whole range.
Why does my cold pressed sesame oil look cloudy at the bottom?
That is sediment from the seed, left in because we filter simply rather than stripping the oil clear. Let the bottle stand and it settles. It is a sign of how little was done to the oil, not of a problem.
How quickly will it reach me?
Orders are packed in 2–3 business days. Free delivery takes 7–14 days, standard shipping is ₹49 (3–7 days) and express is ₹99 (1–3 days). Our full note on delivery timing explains what happens at each stage. All orders are prepaid.
Chennamma Ajji presses cold pressed oils from seed bought directly from Karnataka farmers. FSSAI licence 1122632300006 — verify it yourself on the FSSAI FoSCoS portal.