As with most foods that you’ll find on the shelf, there are huge discrepancies in flavour, taste and texture, the majority of which come down to two things – quality of produce and production techniques.

Cultivation, ingredients, provenance, handling, packaging, storage – all of these factors play a HUGE role in how food looks, tastes and performs when we cook – not to mention the health benefits that it can bring to the table. Perfecting these processes form the foundation of everything we do here at Farrington’s Mellow Yellow, but it’s in our core method: the act of cold pressing our seeds, where the real conduit to quality and value lies.

A better way of doing things

In the same way that a cold pressed juice retains more vitamins, enzymes, minerals and antioxidants than it’s processed counterparts, cold pressed rapeseed oil offers very similar benefits. We never expose the seeds to heat, and we never add anything artificial. Our method simply allows us to extract every ounce of flavour from our seeds whilst maintaining nutritionally beneficial plant sterols, vitamins and healthy fats.

At Farrington’s Mellow Yellow our process is simple: we take the best quality seeds; mechanically squeeze them to release the oil and then filter through a large tea style strainer, before putting the fresh, pure oil in a bottle ready for you to enjoy. As part of this process, we carry out around 39 quality checks on every bottle of oil or salad dressing we make, ensuring only the very best is good enough. Simple pure Mellow Yellow pleasure!

Most culinary oils consumed globally are refined as opposed to being cold pressed. For olive oil this process includes using hexane solvent, phosphoric acid, caustic soda, water and temperatures reaching 250°C. For rapeseed oil the process includes hexane solvent and temperatures around 90°C. These industrial processes lose much of the quality, flavour and colour characteristics of the original oils. Refined olive oil is also referred to as pomace oil.

As the magic ingredient behind the healthy Mediterranean diet, olive oil is often perceived as the gold standard in oils. And it’s true – olive oil is great! But so are other oils too. And when it comes to health benefits, rapeseed oil supersedes olive oil in many ways, particularly when the oils are cold pressed.

At Farrington’s Mellow Yellow, we’re proud to produce a rapeseed oil with seeds originating from LEAF Marque grower farms and our own family farm here in Hargrave. We value traceability enormously and we are proud to be at the helm of our production line – sowing, growing and pressing the rapeseed oil into high quality, delicious bottles for you to enjoy at home.