Walk into an older Indian market town and you may still hear it: the slow creak of a wooden press turning in a circle, crushing mustard seed into oil. This is the ghani — and it is where the VedSaras story begins.
How a wooden press works
A wood press is a large mortar with a heavy wooden pestle inside. Seeds — or dried coconut, in the case of coconut oil — are fed into the mortar, and the pestle turns slowly, grinding and pressing them. The oil that separates is collected, left to settle and then filtered before it is bottled.
How is it different from an expeller?
Most commercial oil is produced in high-speed metal expellers, often followed by refining. A wood press turns far more slowly. The method is gentler and is one of the oldest ways of extracting oil in India; the oil typically keeps the colour, aroma and flavour of the seed it came from.
Wood-pressed, cold-pressed, organic — are they the same?
No. Wood-pressed describes the equipment and method. Cold-pressed refers to pressing without external heat. Organic is a certification about how the seeds were grown. A product can be one without being the others, so it is worth reading labels carefully.
Choosing a wood-pressed oil
Each oil brings its own character to the kitchen — the bold pungency of black mustard, the familiar warmth of yellow mustard, the mild nuttiness of groundnut and the light aroma of virgin coconut. Explore the VedSaras collection to find the one that suits your cooking.
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