Oil, cottonseed, salad or cooking

Cottonseed oil is a light-colored, mild-flavored vegetable oil with a high smoke point, which makes it a common choice for deep frying snack foods like potato and tortilla chips, frying doughnuts, and baking, as well as for salad dressings and margarine blends where a neutral taste is wanted. It shows up less often on home pantry shelves than canola or blended vegetable oils but is widely used in commercial food production, particularly in fried and packaged snack foods, and it's also a traditional frying fat in some Southern American and Middle Eastern cooking.

Store cottonseed oil in a cool, dark place away from heat and light to slow rancidity, and keep the cap tightly closed after opening to limit exposure to air, since oils gradually pick up off flavors once the seal is broken. As a pure fat, it delivers 884 calories per 100g, about 124 calories per tablespoon, with none of that coming from protein or carbohydrate and zero sodium or sugar, so it's used in small measured amounts for cooking or dressing rather than eaten as a food on its own. Its standout feature is vitamin E, at 235% DV per 100g, among the higher levels found in any cooking oil, which is one reason it holds up reasonably well to repeated frying.