Corn & Palm Oil

Corn oil is pressed from the germ of maize kernels and refined into a pale, mild oil. It has a high smoke point and a clean taste, so it suits deep frying, shallow frying and baking cakes and muffins where you want moisture without flavour. It sits with the everyday cooking fats in our oils and ghee department.

Unrefined palm oil is something else entirely. Pressed from the fruit of the oil palm, it is a deep orange red with an earthy, slightly savoury flavour, and it is essential in West African cooking: Nigerian banga soup, egusi and efo riro, Ghanaian palaver sauce and red red. It sets semi solid at cool room temperature, which is normal. Both oils here come from KTC.

For a neutral oil similar to corn, try sunflower oil or vegetable and rapeseed oil. Cooks making West African dishes will also find fufu flours and gari in our fufu and gari range.

Heat red palm oil gently, as it scorches and turns bitter if pushed to smoking. Warm the jar in a bowl of hot water to loosen it before measuring, and keep corn oil capped in a cool cupboard.