Cooking oil is plant, animal or synthetic fat used in frying, baking and other types of cooking. It is also used in food preparation and flavoring that doesn't involve heat, such as salad dressings and bread dips, and in this sense might be more accurately termed edible oil.

Cooking oil is typically a liquid, although some oils that contain saturated fat, such as coconut oil, palm oil and palm kernel oil, are solid at room temperature.[1]

Types of cooking oil include: ghee, olive oil, palm oil, soybean oil, canola oil (rapeseed oil), pumpkin seed oil, corn oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, peanut oil, grape seed oil, sesame oil, argan oil, rice bran oil and other vegetable oils.

Oil can be flavoured with aromatic foodstuffs such as herbs, chillies or garlic.