Flora

Flora is a long-standing household name in Britain, best known for its spreads, and its sunflower oil carries the same everyday familiarity. It is a pure, single-seed oil with a pale colour and a neutral taste, the kind of bottle that lives beside the hob and gets used for nearly everything.

From Flora we carry pure sunflower oil, filtered and refined to a clear, light gold. It sits with the other bottles in our oils and ghee department, where it plays the all-rounder: neutral enough for frying and baking, thin enough to drizzle, and easy to find a use for every day of the week.

In South Asian cooking a neutral oil earns its place in the deep fryer. Onion bhajis, vegetable samosas, puris, medu vadai and Sri Lankan short eats such as rolls and patties all come out crisp and clean in sunflower oil, with no taste carried over from the fat. It also works for the tarka of cumin and garlic at the start of a dal, for a Victoria sponge, and for a salad dressing with lemon and chaat masala. Choose sunflower when the spices should lead, and a flavoured oil such as gingelly, mustard or coconut when the oil itself is part of the dish.

Keep the bottle capped and away from the window, as light and warmth wear down any oil over time. Frying oil can be strained through a fine sieve and used once or twice more, but throw it out once it darkens or smells sharp. For other everyday oils, compare Flora with our vegetable and rapeseed oil and groundnut oil ranges.