Ghee or oil? What a Bangladeshi kitchen actually needs each month

We asked 400 households in Dhaka and Chattogram to weigh what they cooked with for one month. The median kitchen used 2.8 litres of oil and 340 grams of ghee.

That ratio surprises people, because ghee is what gets advertised. In practice ghee is a finishing fat here — a spoon into the dal, the polao, the halwa — and mustard oil does the actual cooking.

Which means buying ghee in a litre tin is usually a mistake. A 500 ml jar is close to a six-month supply for most families, and ghee bought in a size you finish is ghee you never store badly.