Meet the Product: Cold-Pressed Walnut Oil, How to Use It

October 9, 2026

Walnut oil is one of the great finishing oils. It has a sweet, nutty flavour that turns a simple salad or bowl of vegetables into something special. This guide covers what is in the bottle, how it is made, how to use it and how to keep it at its best.

What it is and where it comes from

Our Cold-Pressed Organic Walnut Oil is made from 100% organic walnuts sourced from Europe and pressed without chemicals. Walnut oil has long been a favourite in French kitchens, where it is traditionally drizzled over salads and finished dishes rather than used for frying.

How walnut oil is made

The method is simple in principle. In the traditional Périgord method, walnut kernels are ground to a paste and pressed, and the oil runs out. What varies is the temperature. The Codex Alimentarius, the international food standards body, describes cold-pressed oils as obtained, without altering the oil, by mechanical procedure only and without the application of heat. Mechanical pressing means no solvents are involved.

The French specification for Périgord walnut oil shows how much temperature matters. Its cold method keeps the ground paste below 45°C and gives a pale straw to golden oil that smells of fresh walnut. Its hot method heats the paste to 60 to 100°C and gives a darker oil with baked, toasted notes. Both are legitimate; they are simply different oils.

Flavour

Sweet, nutty and rounded, with the unmistakable taste of fresh walnuts. It is more fragrant than olive oil, so a little goes a long way. A trace of bitterness at the back of the palate is normal: walnuts contain tannins, and the same pleasant edge is there in the whole nut.

Use it cold

The delicate flavour is at its best when the oil is not heated. A Dordogne tourism site notes that walnut oil breaks down quickly under heat, so it is used mainly as a dressing or added to a dish at the end. Treat it as a finishing oil rather than a frying oil:

Whisk into vinaigrettes and salad dressings.
Drizzle over roasted vegetables, soups or risotto just before serving.
Stir into dips and hummus.
Toss through warm grains or pasta.
Spoon over porridge with a pinch of salt for a savoury breakfast.

A dressing to start with

Whisk a teaspoon of mustard and a pinch of salt into two tablespoons of cider vinegar or lemon juice. Add six tablespoons of walnut oil in a slow stream, whisking as you go, and taste. If it is too assertive for delicate leaves, replace half the walnut oil with a milder oil. Dress the salad at the last moment so the leaves stay crisp.

Walnut oil and olive oil

The two oils are built differently. The NHS lists olive oil among the sources of monounsaturated fat. Walnut oil is mostly polyunsaturated: published analyses put linoleic acid at roughly 60 to 66 per cent of the oil, against 13 to 20 per cent for oleic acid, the main monounsaturated fat. That difference in make-up is one reason the oils behave differently in the kitchen. Olive oil is the all-rounder; walnut oil is the aromatic finishing touch you add at the end.

Good pairings

Walnut oil loves beetroot, pears, apples, bitter leaves, mushrooms, lentils and anything with a little acidity, such as lemon, cider vinegar or balsamic. Soft cheeses, particularly goat's cheese, and a scatter of chopped walnuts echo the flavour nicely.

Keeping it at its best

Walnut oil is rich in polyunsaturated fats, which react readily with oxygen. A 2024 paper in Frontiers in Nutrition notes that walnut oil is easy to oxidise and turns rancid during storage, and a 2021 study in Foods found that the oxidative stability of oil from two walnut cultivars fell significantly over storage. So treat the bottle like a perishable: keep it somewhere cool and dry, away from the hob, put the cap back on straight after pouring, and use it within 3 months of opening. If it smells sharp or harsh rather than fresh and nutty, it is past its best.