Front Burner
The inspiration for Ulli’s Oil Mill may be Austrian, but these plant-seed oils are made in Long Island City, Queens.
For Ulrike Sitter, pressing plant seeds for oil is a tradition she has imported from her native Austria, where toasted pumpkinseed oil is a culinary staple. Ms. Sitter does her work at the Entrepreneur Space in Long Island City, Queens, making hempseed, rapeseed, sunflower-based chile and camelina seed (tea seed) oils from crops grown upstate. For now, she produces her pumpkinseed oil from Austrian seeds, but she expects to have New York-grown pumpkin seeds soon. Each oil is best used as a finishing oil to season food, though camelina oil — earthy and with a high smoke point — is effective for cooking.
Ulli’s Oil Mill organic oils, each 3.4 ounces, camelina, $18; raps (rapeseed), $15; hemp, $20; chile oil, $20; Austrian pumpkinseed, $20, ullisoilmill.com.
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Florence Fabricant is a food and wine writer. She writes the weekly Front Burner and Off the Menu columns, as well as the Pairings column, which appears alongside the monthly wine reviews. She has also written 12 cookbooks.
