Which Cooking Oil Is Best for Your Trilonium Cast Iron and Carbon Steel Cookware?

Dear reader,

One question we are asked often — sometimes by a customer who has just unboxed a new Trilonium pan, sometimes by someone who has been cooking on one for years — is simple: which oil should I actually be cooking with? It is a fair question, because the oil you use every day in the kadai or tawa is a different matter altogether from TilCrust™, our factory seasoning. Let us clear this up properly.

Cooking Oil and Seasoning Oil Are Not the Same Thing

Every piece of Trilonium ferrous cookware arrives triple-seasoned with TilCrust™ — our proprietary blend of two or more cold-pressed vegetable oils, cured onto the surface at a controlled temperature, with nothing synthetic about it. That is the base layer that makes the pan ready to cook on, right out of the box.

The oil you pour in afterwards, for your everyday tadka, frying, or roasting, is a separate decision — and a good one, made daily, actually helps your seasoning along rather than working against it. A dry pan with no oil at all is the one thing that does the seasoning no favours.

Mustard Oil

A kitchen staple across large parts of India, and for good reason. Mustard oil has a high smoke point, so it holds up well to the strong, steady heat a kadai or tawa is built to carry — whether that is a tadka, a stir-fry, or shallow frying. The pungency mellows beautifully once it is heated, and it leaves a pleasant depth behind in curries and sabzis cooked on iron.

Groundnut (Peanut) Oil

If you are after something more neutral-tasting, groundnut oil is a dependable choice, especially for deep frying in a kadai. It too carries a high smoke point, so it is well suited to the kind of sustained heat that cast iron holds onto so well — think pakoras, puris, or Diwali snacks.

Ghee

For parathas, rotis, and dosas off a tawa, ghee is hard to beat. It browns beautifully, gives that familiar aroma, and works happily with the iron surface. It is better suited to shallow cooking than to deep frying, simply because of cost more than anything else, but as a finishing drizzle or a cooking medium for flatbreads, it is a natural match.

Coconut Oil

A first choice in many South Indian kitchens, particularly for appam, paniyaram, and tempering. It has a moderate smoke point, so it is best kept to medium heat rather than high-heat frying — perfectly suited to the gentler cooking a dosa tawa or paniyaram pan calls for.

Sesame (Til) Oil

Used more as a flavour than a frying medium in most Indian kitchens, sesame oil is wonderful in small quantities for tempering and finishing — a few drops at the end of a South Indian curry or a stir-fry. Its smoke point is on the lower side, so it is not the one to reach for when the kadai needs to run hot for a long stretch.

A Small Daily Habit That Helps

Whichever oil you reach for, using a reasonable quantity rather than cooking dry, and giving the pan a light wipe of oil after washing and drying it, keeps your TilCrust™ seasoning in good health over months and years of use. Our Trilonium CrockWok Kadhai, 24cm is a good example of a pan built for exactly this kind of everyday oil-and-heat routine — tadka, frying, deep curries, all in one.

There is no single "correct" oil for cast iron or carbon steel — only the right oil for the dish in front of you, and a little consistency in how you treat the pan afterwards.

With warm regards,

Avinash Kalro