9 Substitutes for Sesame Oil (Toasted and Plain, With Exact Ratios)

The noodles are draining, the stir-fry is off the heat, and the sesame oil bottle is empty. Annoying — but before you grab whatever oil is closest, there is one thing worth knowing, because it decides everything about what to reach for.

There are two completely different products sold as sesame oil. Toasted sesame oil is deep amber-brown, intensely nutty, and is a flavoring, not a cooking fat — you use a teaspoon at the end of a dish. Plain (or refined, or light) sesame oil is pale gold, nearly flavorless, and is a plain cooking fat with a high smoke point. As America's Test Kitchen puts it, plain sesame oil has very little color, smell, or flavor, while toasted oil should be saved for vinaigrettes or added off-heat at the end and "should not be used as a cooking medium."

If your recipe says "1 teaspoon sesame oil, added at the end" or "for drizzling," you want the toasted list. If it says "2 tablespoons sesame oil" and you are about to fry something in it, you want the plain list — and that one is easy, because almost any oil in your kitchen will do. Both lists are below, with exact ratios.

The Quick List

• Perilla oil — the closest match to toasted sesame oil, 1:1, if you can find it
• Toasted sesame seeds ground into neutral oil — the best DIY fix; it is literally the same ingredient
• Tahini or Chinese sesame paste, thinned — real sesame flavor from the pantry, for dressings and sauces
• Walnut oil — nutty and close in spirit; uncooked uses only
• Roasted peanut oil — a strong finishing oil with the same toasted character
• Any neutral oil (canola, grapeseed, sunflower) — a straight 1:1 for plain sesame oil
• Avocado oil — for plain sesame oil in high-heat wok cooking
• Peanut oil — a classic stir-fry fat, 1:1 for plain sesame oil
• Light or refined olive oil — fine for plain sesame oil in sauteing and marinades

Substitutes for Toasted Sesame Oil (The Flavor One)

This is the one most people are actually searching for, and it is the harder problem. Toasted sesame oil is not doing a fat's job in your dish — a tablespoon of oil is not what makes fried rice work. It is doing an aroma job, the same way vanilla extract does in a cake. So the goal is not to find a fat, it is to find toasted nuttiness.

Two more things worth knowing before you swap. First, a little goes a long way: most recipes use only a teaspoon or two, and doubling it makes food taste bitter and heavy, so err low with any substitute. Second, toasted sesame oil is nearly always added off the heat at the end. Its smoke point is only about 350°F, versus 410°F for the refined kind, and since the seeds were already toasted, cooking it hard just tastes burnt.

Perilla Oil

• Swap: 1:1 (1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil → 1 teaspoon perilla oil)
• Best for: Anything toasted sesame oil does — drizzling, dressings, noodles, rice, banchan
• Skip it for: Cooking over heat; treat it exactly like toasted sesame oil
• Health notes: One of the richest plant sources of omega-3 ALA at 54–64% — more than flaxseed oil

Perilla oil (deulgireum in Korean) is pressed from toasted perilla seeds, and it is the single closest stand-in there is: same viscosity, same dark toasted aroma, same job as a finishing oil. If you have a Korean or Asian grocery nearby, or the patience for an online order, it is worth keeping a small bottle in the fridge — it is genuinely great in its own right, not just as a backup.

The catch is availability: it is not on most supermarket shelves, so this is the substitute for people who happen to already have it. Like toasted sesame oil, it goes rancid fast and belongs in the refrigerator.

Toasted Sesame Seeds Ground Into Neutral Oil

• Swap: Blend 1 part toasted sesame seeds to 4 parts neutral oil, then use 1:1 in place of the toasted sesame oil
• Best for: Dipping sauces, dressings, noodle bowls, anything finished with a drizzle
• Skip it for: Nothing much — though the seed flecks are visible, which is usually a feature
• Health notes: You get the whole seed, so a little fiber, protein, magnesium, and zinc come along with it

If you have sesame seeds, you can make the flavor yourself, because that is all toasted sesame oil is. Toast the seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes until they smell nutty and turn a shade darker, then grind or blend them into a neutral oil like canola or grapeseed. Let it sit 10 minutes if you have it; strain it if you want it clear.

Honest assessment: it will not be as concentrated as the bottled stuff, which is pressed from a lot more seeds than you are using. Start with a slightly heavier hand than the recipe calls for and taste. This is the best option for most people, since sesame seeds are a common pantry item and everything else on this list is a compromise.

Tahini or Chinese Sesame Paste, Thinned

• Swap: 1 teaspoon paste whisked with 2 teaspoons neutral oil → replaces 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
• Best for: Dressings, cold noodle sauces, dipping sauces — anywhere a little body is welcome
• Skip it for: A clean final drizzle; it will not sheen the way oil does

Same seed, different form. Whisk the paste into a neutral oil until it is pourable and you have something close to sesame oil's flavor with a bit more thickness. If you have the choice, Chinese sesame paste beats tahini here — it is made from fully toasted seeds, so it tastes like the oil you are replacing, while most Middle Eastern tahini is made from raw or lightly toasted seeds and is milder and slightly more bitter.

Do not be tempted to add more paste to get more flavor. Past roughly a 1:3 paste-to-oil ratio it turns chalky and bitter, and in a dressing it will dull everything else.

Walnut Oil

• Swap: ¾ tablespoon walnut oil per 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
• Best for: Salad dressings, cold sauces, drizzling over finished dishes
• Skip it for: Any cooking — it turns bitter with heat

Walnut oil is the most likely nutty finishing oil to already be in a Western kitchen, and it lands in roughly the right neighborhood: rich, toasty, assertive. It is a touch stronger than toasted sesame oil, which is why the ratio is slightly under 1:1.

It is not a flavor match — nobody will mistake your noodles for having sesame oil in them — but it fills the same slot in the dish, which is what matters when you are mid-recipe. Keep it strictly uncooked, and keep it refrigerated between uses.

Roasted Peanut Oil

• Swap: 1:1
• Best for: Stir-fries, noodles, dipping sauces — finishing, the same as sesame
• Skip it for: Anyone with a peanut allergy, obviously

Note the word roasted — this is not the same as the plain peanut oil sold for frying. Roasted (sometimes labeled toasted) peanut oil is a dark, aromatic finishing oil made the same way toasted sesame oil is, and it slots into East and Southeast Asian dishes very comfortably.

The flavor reads as peanut rather than sesame, which in a stir-fry or a cold noodle salad is a perfectly happy place to end up. It is a swap that changes the dish rather than hiding the change — and often for the better.

Substitutes for Plain Sesame Oil (The Cooking One)

Good news: this is nearly a non-problem. Refined sesame oil is a neutral, high-smoke-point cooking fat, so anything else neutral will do the same job. It has a 410°F smoke point, so the only rule is to pick a substitute that can take the heat you are cooking at.

Any Neutral Oil (Canola, Grapeseed, Sunflower)

• Swap: 1:1
• Best for: Stir-frying, sauteing, marinades, dressings — everything plain sesame oil does
• Skip it for: Nothing; this is a true like-for-like swap

Canola, grapeseed (smoke point 420°F), sunflower, or a generic vegetable oil blend will all behave identically in the pan. If one is on your shelf, use it and move on — your dish will not notice.

Avocado Oil

• Swap: 1:1
• Best for: Screaming-hot wok work, searing, frying
• Skip it for: Nothing, other than your wallet — it is expensive for everyday use

Refined avocado oil has the highest smoke point of the common oils, at 480°F and up, so it comfortably handles anything you would use plain sesame oil for and then some. It is mild enough not to interfere with the dish's actual seasoning.

Peanut Oil

• Swap: 1:1
• Best for: Stir-fries and deep frying — refined peanut oil takes 450°F
• Skip it for: Peanut allergies

Refined peanut oil is a wok-cooking staple across much of Asia and is arguably a more traditional choice than plain sesame oil in the first place. It is faintly nutty at most, which is a small bonus rather than an intrusion.

Light or Refined Olive Oil

• Swap: 1:1
• Best for: Sauteing, marinades, and sauces where medium heat is enough
• Skip it for: High-heat wok cooking, and use light or refined — not extra virgin, whose flavor fights East Asian seasonings

Light or refined olive oil is a fine 1:1 stand-in for plain sesame oil in most everyday cooking, and it brings more monounsaturated fat along with it. The word "light" here refers to the flavor and color, not the calories — it is the same 120 calories a tablespoon as every other oil.

The Healthier Angle (and an Honest Caveat)

Let us be straight about this: swapping one oil for another is not where your nutrition is won or lost. Every oil on this list is roughly 120 calories and 14 grams of fat per tablespoon, and you are using a teaspoon of the toasted kind. Sesame oil itself is a perfectly good fat — mostly unsaturated, split about 42% monounsaturated and 44% polyunsaturated.

That said, two swaps here are genuine upgrades. Perilla oil is the standout: at 54–64% ALA it is one of the most omega-3-dense plant oils there is, which is a rare thing in a bottle you can drizzle on noodles. And grinding whole toasted sesame seeds into oil gives you the actual seed — fiber, protein, magnesium, zinc — instead of just the pressed fat, and whole sesame seeds count toward your plant diversity for the week in a way that refined oil does not.

The bigger lever is what the sesame oil is going on. A drizzle of toasted sesame oil over a bowl of vegetables and beans and a splash of soy sauce is a great dinner regardless of which nutty oil you used.

What About Sesame Allergies?

Sesame is now the ninth major food allergen in the United States and has to be declared on packaged food labels, so this is a real reason people search for a substitute rather than just an empty-bottle problem.

If you are cooking sesame-free, the DIY seed grind and the sesame pastes are obviously out. Perilla oil is the best pick — it is botanically unrelated to sesame (it is in the mint family) and gets closest to the flavor. Walnut oil or roasted peanut oil are the next best, allergies permitting. For plain sesame oil, any neutral oil is a clean swap with nothing lost.

If you are adapting a whole recipe rather than one line of it, Eat Well Planner's Recipe Variations can rewrite the entire thing sesame-free with the swaps already worked in — which beats reading every line looking for hidden sesame.

What Not to Use

• Extra virgin olive oil in place of toasted sesame oil. Both are strongly flavored finishing oils, so the instinct makes sense — but peppery, grassy olive tastes wrong against soy, ginger, and garlic. Refined olive oil for the plain kind is fine; extra virgin as a sesame-flavor stand-in is not.
• Toasted sesame oil as your frying fat. If the only bottle you have is the dark one and the recipe wants the light one, do not just pour it in the wok. At 350°F it smokes early, the aroma cooks off, and it turns acrid. Fry in a neutral oil and finish with a few drops of the toasted oil off the heat.
• Doubling any substitute to "make up" the flavor. Sesame flavor does not scale linearly — it turns bitter and greasy. Accept a slightly quieter dish and add a pinch of toasted seeds on top instead.
• Sesame seed cooking spray or blended "sesame flavored" oils. These are usually mostly soybean oil with a whisper of sesame. Fine in the pan, useless as a finisher.
• Skipping it silently in a dressing. In a stir-fry, leaving out a teaspoon of sesame oil is survivable. In a sesame dressing or a cold noodle sauce, it is the flavor — use the seed grind or the thinned paste rather than nothing.

Which One Fits Your Recipe?

The honest answer is that it depends on the dish, and a blog post cannot see your dish. That is the gap Eat Well Planner's AI recipe chat fills: import the recipe you are actually cooking, ask "I am out of toasted sesame oil — what should I use?", and it answers with your ingredient list, your method, and your other seasonings in front of it. Sometimes the answer is walnut oil; sometimes it is that this particular dish has enough going on that you can skip it.

And if you are curious what a swap does nutritionally rather than just how it tastes, the Recipe Playground lets you change an ingredient and watch the recipe's nutrition score move in real time, so you can see the difference before you commit to it. Both are free — as is the rest of it: recipe importing from any site, meal plans, and shopping lists that write themselves.