Description
Salad oil is a blanket term for any edible oil used in salad dressings. It may be corn oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, canola oil, peanut oil, a light olive oil, or any other fairly bland vegetable.

How to Select
• The choice of oil totally depends upon one’s likes and dislikes.
• You can use any kind of edible vegetable oil for salad dressings and sauces.
• A salad oil must not contain solid crystals that will become waxy and thick on refrigeration.

Culinary Uses
• Salad oil is used for preparing various pourable and spoonful salad dressings, as well as the well-known mayonnaise. It provides a creamy texture and helps spread the flavour of the dressing throughout the salad.
• A salad oil coats the salad ingredients, improving the palatability of the salad by providing some lubrication and imparting a good mouth feel.
• Mayonnaise has around 80 percent salad oil, which improves its viscosity.
• Other thick salad dressings have around 35-50 percent oil, which helps to modify the mouth feel of the starch paste that thickens the product.

How to Store
• It is important to store oil properly to retain its delicate taste, colour and nutritive profile.
• Salad oil is like other oils and can easily go rancid when exposed to air, light or high temperatures.
• So, keep the oil in a cool and dark place, tightly sealed.

Health Benefits
• Salad oil or edible vegetable oil is more healthful than other sources of alimentary fat because of its high content of monounsaturated fat (mainly oleic acid) and polyphenols.
• The high oxidative stability and high content of antioxidants, makes it a healthier option compared to other oils.