Olive Oil Substitutes: What to Use Instead, Dish by Dish
The best olive oil substitute depends on the dish, not on the bottle that happens to be in the cupboard. For a salad dressing, a cold-pressed rapeseed or avocado oil swaps in one-for-one; for frying and roasting, any stable, mostly monounsaturated oil does the job; for baking, a neutral oil swaps one-for-one and melted butter at about four parts butter to three of oil. Only bread dipping and the finishing drizzle have no true stand-in. This guide gives the swap and the ratio dish by dish — dressings, dips, roasting, frying and baking — and says plainly where another oil is genuinely the better choice, and where the substitute costs you something.
For our own oil, see our Cold-Pressed Single-Estate Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Marrakech.
The Short Answer
- For dressings, marinades and cold sauces, swap olive oil one-for-one with cold-pressed rapeseed (canola) oil or avocado oil; a nut oil such as walnut works too, ideally cut half-and-half with a milder oil.
- For sautéing, shallow frying and roasting, use rapeseed, avocado or high-oleic sunflower oil one-for-one, or ghee; butter alone burns at high heat.
- For deep frying, a refined rapeseed, groundnut or high-oleic sunflower oil is honestly the better choice on cost.
- For baking a recipe written for olive oil, use sunflower or rapeseed oil one-for-one, or melted butter at about 100g for every 75ml of olive oil.
- Bread dipping and the finishing drizzle are where no substitute really replaces a good extra virgin olive oil — a flavourful nut or seed oil is the closest you will get.
- On health, a 28-year US cohort study of 92,383 adults found no significant difference in mortality between olive oil and other vegetable oils combined; replacing butter, margarine, mayonnaise or dairy fat with olive oil was associated with 8–34% lower risk of death [1].
How to Choose an Olive Oil Substitute: Match the Job, Not the Bottle
To choose an olive oil substitute, ask what the olive oil was doing in the recipe. If it was flavour — a dressing, a dip, a drizzle — you need an oil with character of its own. If it was cooking fat — sautéing, roasting, frying — you need a heat-stable oil, usually one that is mostly monounsaturated. If it was structure in a bake, any liquid oil works.
Three practical questions narrow it down. First, is the oil heated? Unsaturated oils differ in how fast they break down; oils rich in monounsaturated fat, such as rapeseed, avocado and high-oleic sunflower, hold up best, while standard sunflower, corn and soybean oils oxidise faster. Second, does flavour matter? Neutral oils disappear; nut and toasted seed oils announce themselves. Third, does the fat need to stay liquid? Butter, ghee and coconut oil set firm as they cool, which changes a dressing or a cold dish completely. Our ranked guide to the healthiest cooking oil covers each oil's wider profile.
Olive Oil Substitutes Dish by Dish: The Swap Table
The table gives the best swap for each job, the ratio to use in place of olive oil, and what the swap costs you. Ratios are by volume unless stated.
| Dish or job | Best substitute | Ratio for olive oil | What changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salad dressings and vinaigrettes | Cold-pressed rapeseed oil; avocado oil; walnut or hazelnut oil | 1:1 (nut oils: half nut, half mild oil) | Loses olive oil's peppery, grassy notes; nut oils add their own |
| Mayonnaise and aioli | Sunflower or rapeseed oil | 1:1, or half and half with olive oil | Milder flavour — often an improvement here |
| Bread dipping and finishing drizzle | Walnut, hazelnut or pumpkin seed oil | 1:1 | No true equivalent; a different flavour, not a copy |
| Pesto, hummus and cold sauces | Cold-pressed rapeseed or avocado oil | 1:1 | Slightly flatter flavour; texture unchanged |
| Marinades | Any liquid oil you like the taste of | 1:1 | Very little — the other ingredients carry the flavour |
| Roasting vegetables | Rapeseed or avocado oil; melted ghee | 1:1 | Ghee adds a nutty richness; neutral oils add nothing |
| Sautéing and shallow frying | Rapeseed, avocado or high-oleic sunflower oil; ghee | 1:1 | Little; butter alone burns — mix it with oil |
| Deep frying | Refined rapeseed, groundnut or high-oleic sunflower oil | 1:1 | Usually the better choice on cost |
| Stir-frying | Groundnut or rapeseed oil | 1:1 | Better flavour fit for most East and South-East Asian dishes |
| Baking (recipe written for olive oil) | Sunflower or rapeseed oil; melted butter | Oil 1:1; butter about 100g per 75ml | Neutral oil keeps the moist crumb; butter gives a richer, firmer cake |
| Greasing tins and trays | Butter, any oil, or baking paper | As needed | Nothing meaningful |
| Oil-free sautéing | Water or stock | 2–3 tablespoons at a time | No browning or crisp edges; softer, steamed result |
Read down the third column and a pattern appears: for almost every liquid-oil job the swap is one-for-one. The only conversion arithmetic comes when butter enters the picture, because butter is roughly 80% fat and the rest is mostly water and milk solids.
Dressings, Dips and Finishing Drizzles
Raw uses are where olive oil is hardest to replace, because here the oil is the flavour. In a vinaigrette, cold-pressed rapeseed oil is the most practical swap: it is liquid, mild and mostly monounsaturated, and it takes mustard, vinegar and herbs well. Avocado oil is softer still. For more character, walnut or hazelnut oil makes an excellent dressing for bitter leaves, beetroot or lentils — but both are strong, so most cooks cut them half-and-half with a milder oil.
Mayonnaise is the honest exception that runs the other way. Many cooks find that extra virgin olive oil turns bitter when whizzed hard in a blender, and a neutral sunflower or rapeseed oil — or a half-and-half blend — often makes the better mayonnaise. For pesto and hummus, a cold-pressed rapeseed oil swaps in one-for-one with only a slightly flatter result.
Bread dipping and finishing are where we will not pretend. A toasted pumpkin seed or walnut oil makes a lovely dip in its own right, but it is a different flavour, not a copy. If dipping is the point of the meal, that is the one place to keep good olive oil in the cupboard.
Roasting Vegetables and Traybakes
Roasting is the easiest swap of all. Toss vegetables in rapeseed or avocado oil at exactly the quantity the recipe gives for olive oil — typically one to two tablespoons per tray — and roast as written. The oil's job here is to carry heat and help the surface brown, and any stable liquid oil does that.
Melted ghee is a good choice for root vegetables and squash: it is clarified butter, so the milk solids that burn in ordinary butter have been removed, and it adds a gentle nutty richness. Butter on its own works for a short, moderate roast, but at a hot oven setting for 40 minutes its milk solids can catch. Our comparison of olive oil vs ghee covers where each one wins.
One thing worth knowing: extra virgin olive oil is more heat-stable than its reputation suggests, so if you have it, you do not need to swap it out for roasting at all. Our guide to olive oil at high heat explains what actually happens in the pan.
Sautéing, Shallow Frying and Deep Frying
For sautéing and shallow frying, rapeseed (canola), avocado and high-oleic sunflower oil all swap in one-for-one. All three are mostly monounsaturated, so they behave much like olive oil in the pan. Standard sunflower, corn and soybean oils work for a quick sauté but are richer in polyunsaturated fat, which oxidises faster under prolonged heat. Ghee is stable and flavourful; butter alone burns, so if you want its taste, start with a spoonful of oil and add the butter to it.
Deep frying is where another oil honestly makes more sense. Olive oil fries well: in a Portuguese laboratory study by Casal and colleagues (Food and Chemical Toxicology, 2010), commercial olive oils lasted 24–27 hours of domestic-style frying before reaching the 25% legal limit for polar compounds, against 15 hours for a vegetable oil blend [2]. But filling a fryer with extra virgin olive oil is expensive, and the flavour you paid for is lost to the heat. A refined rapeseed, groundnut or high-oleic sunflower oil is the practical choice. Our guide to the healthiest oil for frying compares every common oil at the pan.
Baking: When the Recipe Calls for Olive Oil
When a cake, loaf or focaccia recipe is written for olive oil, any neutral liquid oil — sunflower or rapeseed — swaps in one-for-one. The crumb stays moist and tender because the fat stays liquid; you lose only the fruity note an olive oil cake is often built around.
Melted butter works too, but needs a conversion, because butter is part water. Use about four parts butter to three parts oil: roughly 100g of melted butter for every 75ml of olive oil, or about 1⅓ cups of butter for every cup of oil. The cake will taste richer and firm up more as it cools. Coconut oil swaps one-for-one when melted, but it sets solid at room temperature, so the texture changes. For the swap in the other direction, our guide to olive oil for baking gives the butter-to-oil conversion in full.
When Another Oil Really Is the Better Choice
A fair objection to any olive oil producer writing this guide is that we would say olive oil wins every time. It does not, and there are four jobs where we would reach for something else ourselves:
- Deep frying — refined rapeseed or groundnut oil does the job for a fraction of the cost.
- Mayonnaise — a neutral oil, or a half-and-half blend, avoids the bitterness that blended extra virgin olive oil can bring.
- Neutral bakes — in a vanilla sponge or a chiffon cake where you want no flavour at all, a neutral oil is the cleaner fit.
- Many stir-fries — groundnut and toasted sesame oil suit the flavours of most East and South-East Asian cooking better than olive oil does.
A second objection is price: good extra virgin olive oil costs more than most alternatives. That is true, and the swap table above is built for that reality. Use the cheaper oil where it makes no difference to the dish, and keep the good olive oil for raw dressings, dipping and finishing, where it makes the most. Our comparisons of olive oil vs canola (rapeseed) oil and olive oil vs avocado oil go into each trade-off in detail.
Does Swapping Olive Oil Change the Health Picture?
It depends on what you swap to. A large study that tested substitutions directly is Guasch-Ferré and colleagues' 2022 analysis in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, which followed 60,582 women and 31,801 men in the Nurses' Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study for 28 years [1]. Replacing 10g a day of margarine, butter, mayonnaise or dairy fat with olive oil was associated with 8–34% lower risk of total and cause-specific mortality. When olive oil was compared with other vegetable oils combined, no significant difference was found.
The honest reading: swapping olive oil for rapeseed, sunflower or avocado oil in everyday cooking is unlikely to matter much to your health, while swapping it routinely for butter or other solid animal fats moves in the less favourable direction. This is observational evidence from American adults, so it shows association, not proof of cause. Our comparisons of olive oil vs butter and olive oil vs coconut oil cover the evidence on each.
Choosing a good olive oil when you do buy one matters too; our guide to choosing a quality olive oil explains what to look for on the label.
Why Sidr & Stone
This guide keeps one job for olive oil that nothing else quite does: raw use, where the oil is the flavour. Sidr & Stone's olive oil is a cold-pressed, unfiltered extra virgin olive oil from our own single-estate farm on the plains outside Marrakech, Morocco — the kind of oil worth saving for the dressing, the dip and the final drizzle.
- Single-estate — Sidr & Stone's olive oil comes from our own family-owned farm near Marrakech, and we control every step from tree to bottle, with no blending across origins.
- Rain-fed — our trees are not irrigated; they take what the season gives.
- Organically grown — no synthetic fertilisers, pesticides or herbicides are used (not yet certified; certification is in progress).
- Single harvest — a small, limited batch, picked when the fruit is ready; the current batch's harvest details are on the product page.
- Cold-pressed within hours of harvest — mechanical extraction only, with no solvents, refining or deodorising.
- Unfiltered extra virgin — minimally processed, so it may show natural sediment, which is normal.
- 100% natural — a single ingredient, olive oil, with nothing added.
- Dark glass with a gold label — 500ml, in protective packaging against light.
- 10% of profits to charity — a brand-wide commitment.
- Fulfilment in the UK, EU, and US.
We will not tell you our oil is the right oil for every job in this table — for the deep fryer or the mayonnaise, it is not, and we would rather you knew that. What we will say is that it is single-estate, rain-fed, organically grown and cold-pressed within hours of harvest: an oil for the places where olive oil has no real substitute.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best substitute for olive oil?
For most cooking, cold-pressed rapeseed (canola) oil or avocado oil, swapped one-for-one: both are mostly monounsaturated and behave like olive oil in dressings and in the pan. For deep frying, a refined rapeseed or groundnut oil; for baking, sunflower oil or melted butter.
Why does the right substitute depend on the dish?
Because olive oil does a different job in each one — flavour in a dressing, heat transfer in a pan, moisture in a cake. A substitute only needs to match the job: a neutral oil is fine for frying but poor for dipping, where flavour is everything.
How do I substitute butter for olive oil in baking?
Use about four parts melted butter for every three parts olive oil — roughly 100g of butter for 75ml of oil — because butter is about 80% fat and the rest is mostly water. The bake will be richer and slightly firmer.
Can I use vegetable oil instead of olive oil?
Yes, one-for-one, for frying, roasting and baking. "Vegetable oil" is usually a blend that is richer in polyunsaturated fat, so it suits short cooking better than long, high-heat frying, and it adds no flavour to dressings. Our olive oil vs vegetable oil comparison explains the difference.
Is Sidr & Stone's olive oil worth using in place of a cheaper oil?
For raw dressings, dipping and finishing, yes — that is where an unfiltered, single-estate extra virgin oil makes the most difference. For deep frying or neutral bakes, a cheaper refined oil is the more sensible choice.
Can I use coconut oil instead of olive oil?
Melted, it swaps one-for-one in baking and for some stir-fries, but it sets solid below about 24°C and is mostly saturated fat, so it is a poor choice for dressings and an unfavourable everyday swap for health.
Where can I buy single-estate extra virgin olive oil?
Look for a producer that names one estate, sells only extra virgin oil and uses dark glass. Ours is available to pre-order from our limited single-harvest batch, with fulfilment in the UK, EU, and US.
Is olive oil a medicine?
No. Olive oil is a food, not a medicine. It has a long traditional history — including being honoured in the Prophetic Sunnah — and a substantial body of modern research, particularly around polyphenols, cardiovascular health, and the Mediterranean diet pattern. It can be a worthwhile part of a healthy routine, but it does not cure diseases and is not a substitute for medical care. Be cautious of any olive oil marketed with specific disease-cure claims.
Final Thoughts
Running out of olive oil is rarely a problem. For frying, roasting, marinades and most baking, a stable liquid oil swaps in one-for-one and the dish barely notices; for deep frying and mayonnaise, another oil is often the better choice anyway. Only butter needs a conversion — about four parts butter to three of oil.
The swaps that genuinely cost you something are the raw ones: the dressing, the dip, the drizzle over soup or roasted vegetables. That is where a good extra virgin olive oil earns its place, and where it is worth keeping a bottle back.
Our Cold-Pressed Single-Estate Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Marrakech — rain-fed, organically grown and unfiltered — is available to pre-order from our limited single-harvest batch, with fulfilment in the UK, EU, and US.
Our extra virgin olive oil is grown organically on our own single-estate farm on the plains outside Marrakech: we control every step from tree to bottle, and no synthetic pesticides, herbicides or fertilisers are used. It is not yet certified organic — certification is in progress, and we will publish it as soon as it comes through.
References
- Guasch-Ferré M, Li Y, Willett WC, Sun Q, Sampson L, Salas-Salvadó J, Martínez-González MA, Stampfer MJ, Hu FB. Consumption of olive oil and risk of total and cause-specific mortality among U.S. adults. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2022;79(2):101–112. PMID 35027106. doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2021.10.041
- Casal S, Malheiro R, Sendas A, Oliveira BP, Pereira JA. Olive oil stability under deep-frying conditions. Food Chem Toxicol. 2010;48(10):2972–2979. PMID 20678538. doi:10.1016/j.fct.2010.07.036
Disclaimer: This article shares general cooking guidance and summarises published research at the time of writing; recipes, products and research findings may change, and readers should check current sources. Swap ratios are starting points and individual recipes vary. Take normal care when frying, as hot oil can cause burns and fires, and check labels for nut and other allergens when using nut or seed oils. Olive oil is a food, not a medicine, and is not a substitute for medical treatment of any condition. For any health concern, consult a qualified medical professional.