Which oil for which dish
A simple guide to cooking with groundnut, gingelly and coconut oil.
What “cold-pressed” really means
Wooden chekku, rotary expeller and refined oil: three ways oil is made.
Read the postJournal
Notes from Maram Chekku Oils
Guides, care tips and stories from behind the counter.
A morning at the mill
From the first sack of groundnut at 6 am to the bottles settling in the sun.
Bringing your own groundnuts to the mill
How custom pressing works at our Salem mill: what to bring, how long it takes and what you take home.
What goes into the price of a litre of chekku oil
Seed, yield, power and bottling: why wooden-pressed groundnut oil costs ₹340 a litre.
How to judge cold-pressed oil at home
Smell, colour, sediment and the fridge test: simple checks to tell good wooden-pressed oil from blended oil.
Storing cold-pressed oil so it stays fresh
Bottles, light, heat and how much to buy at a time, so your oil smells as good in month five as in week one.
Oil for Karthigai Deepam lamps
Which oil to use in clay agal vilakku and brass lamps, how much you need, and how to get a steady flame.
Cloudy, solid or bitter: four worries about chekku oil
Why unfiltered oil looks the way it does, and when you should actually be concerned.
Where our seed comes from, around Salem
A short tour of the villages and fields that grow the groundnut, sesame and copra we press each week.
A fresh can every month.
Subscribe and we deliver your oil on the same date each month.