Sesame Oil vs. Perilla Oil: The Difference, the Taste, and When Koreans Use Each

 

Last night, I was frying an egg.

I reached for sesame oil, like always. Opened the fridge. My hand landed on the perilla oil instead.

I'd had this before — a fried egg finished with perilla oil, at a kimchi-jjigae place a while back. The memory came back before I could think it through. I poured it on.

Imokase's Half Sesame, Half Perilla Potato Chips

One bite in, I stopped.

The flavor sat on a completely different level. Deeper. Heavier. A faint grassy edge underneath the nuttiness. I took a spoonful of kimchi jjigae right after, and the combination worked better than it had any right to. The sourness of the kimchi, wrapped in the weight of the perilla oil.

That's when the question hit me. I'd been treating sesame oil and perilla oil as two flavors of the same thing this whole time — just different degrees of "nutty."

I looked into it. Turns out they're not even close. They come from two completely different plants.

Quick Answer

• Sesame oil (chamgireum, 참기름) is pressed from roasted sesame seeds — Sesamum indicum.
• Perilla oil (deulgireum, 들기름) is pressed from perilla seeds — Perilla frutescens.
• The two plants belong to entirely different families. The names sound like variations on each other in Korean, but botanically, they're unrelated.
• Perilla oil ranks among the highest plant-based sources of omega-3 (specifically ALA — alpha-linolenic acid).
• Their smoke points are actually similar — both around 170–180°C (340–355°F). The rule "never heat perilla oil" isn't about smoke point. It's about oxidation — perilla oil goes rancid far faster.
• Sesame oil keeps fine at room temperature. Perilla oil needs refrigeration, and should be used up within about 2 months of opening.
• Sesame oil is the go-to for steady, dependable nuttiness — seasoned vegetables, bibimbap. Perilla oil is for when you want the oil itself to have presence — fried eggs, kimchi jjigae, strong-smelling greens, grilled seaweed.

1. Sesame and Perilla: Similar Names, Unrelated Plants

In Korean, chamkkae (sesame) and deulkkae (perilla) differ by one syllable. Most people — myself included, until this week — assume that means they're two varieties of the same plant.

They're not.

Sesame (chamkkae) Perilla (deulkkae)

Scientific name	Sesamum indicum	Perilla frutescens
Plant family	Pedaliaceae (the sesame family)	Lamiaceae (the mint family)
Oil name	Chamgireum — sesame oil	Deulgireum — perilla oil
Are the leaves eaten?	No	Yes — kkaennip

Here's the detail that matters most for anyone reading this in English. The green leaf Koreans wrap grilled meat in — kkaennip — is not a sesame leaf. It's a perilla leaf. Sesame isn't a leaf crop at all. And yet English-language menus and food blogs routinely call it "sesame leaf." That's a straightforward mistranslation. Perilla is a member of the mint family. It shares no botanical lineage with sesame whatsoever.

(One clarification worth making explicit here: the correct English name is "perilla oil," full stop — not "wild sesame oil," a phrase that shows up often enough online to need correcting. There's nothing "wild" or "sesame" about it. It's perilla, a different plant entirely.)

2. "Never Heat Perilla Oil" Is Half True

The most common myth about perilla oil goes like this: "You can never heat it — it has to be eaten raw."

That's half right.

Judged by smoke point alone, sesame oil and perilla oil are nearly identical — both sit around 170–180°C. That's roughly the temperature you'd deep-fry chicken at. So the claim "perilla oil can't handle heat because its smoke point is too low" is simply inaccurate.

The real issue is something else. Perilla oil oxidizes fast. Its iodine value — a measure of how unsaturated the fat is — runs high, which means exposure to air degrades it quickly, changing both smell and flavor. It's reactive enough that a cloth soaked in perilla oil is reportedly capable of spontaneous combustion under the right conditions.

Two different concepts are getting conflated here — smoke point and oxidative stability — and they call for different rules:

• Perilla oil works fine in liquid-heavy dishes like seaweed soup or dried pollack soup. The moisture keeps the oil's temperature from climbing anywhere near its smoke point.
• It's not the oil to reach for when you're deep-frying or stir-frying at sustained high heat for a long stretch. Smoke point isn't the danger there — repeated heating and air exposure means you're more likely eating an oil that's already started breaking down.
• The safest, most common use is simple: drizzle it on after the cooking is done. You get the aroma without the oxidation risk.

3. The Omega-3 Case for Perilla Oil

Perilla oil gets attention as a health food mainly for one reason: its omega-3 content, specifically alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), ranks among the highest of any plant oil. It's often compared favorably to flaxseed oil — the oil most people think of first when "omega-3" comes up — and holds its own or beats it.

Worth being straight about something here, though. "Omega-3 is good for you" and "a spoonful of perilla oil is a miracle cure" are two different claims. Omega-3 matters in the context of your overall diet — it's not a single ingredient that transforms your health on its own. And because this oil oxidizes so quickly, freshness matters just as much as the nutrition label. A rancid oil isn't just less beneficial. It can work against you.

4. Which Oil Goes With Which Dish

You can't swap these two freely. The flavor profiles diverge enough that certain dishes clearly belong to one oil or the other.

Use case Sesame oil Perilla oil

Seasoned vegetable side dishes (general)	✅ Default choice	Used for some
Strong-smelling greens (bracken fern, dried radish greens)		✅ Cuts the sharp edge
Bibimbap	✅
Brushing seaweed before roasting	✅ (more common)	✅ (some say it's nuttier)
Finishing a fried egg or steamed egg		✅
Stirred into kimchi jjigae or doenjang jjigae		✅
Marinating meat	✅

Short version: sesame oil is the reliable, steady nuttiness. Perilla oil is the one you reach for when you want the oil itself to be noticeable. Strong-smelling vegetables like bracken fern or dried radish greens in particular benefit — perilla oil cuts through that sharper, wilder edge better than sesame oil does.

5. How to Keep It From Going Rancid

• Sesame oil: room temperature is fine. It's a relatively stable oil.
• Perilla oil: refrigerate, no exceptions. Unopened, it holds for roughly a year. Once opened, use it within about 2 months.

Until I looked this up, I kept my perilla oil sitting next to the sink, exactly like the sesame oil. In hindsight, I was almost certainly eating oil that had already oxidized well past its prime. Lesson learned: perilla oil goes straight into the fridge the moment you buy it.

6. The Combination I Found: Fried Egg + Perilla Oil + Kimchi Jjigae

Back to where this started. I reached for sesame oil, remembered a fried egg I'd had at a kimchi-jjigae restaurant finished with perilla oil instead, and poured that on. Then discovered the combination worked with kimchi jjigae far better than I expected.

Turns out this isn't some accidental discovery on my part — it's a known pairing in Korea. The heavy, resinous aroma of perilla oil wraps around the sour heat of kimchi jjigae in a way sesame oil never quite manages. Sesame oil would've done its job quietly. Perilla oil makes itself known.

Try this: fry your egg, kill the heat, then drizzle on about half a spoon of perilla oil while the pan is still hot. The aroma hits immediately. Eat it alongside kimchi jjigae, and an ordinary weeknight dinner suddenly tastes like something else.

FAQ

Can I substitute perilla oil for sesame oil in any recipe? Not safely, no. The flavors diverge enough that perilla oil's strength can overwhelm a dish built for sesame oil's subtler nuttiness.

What happens if I don't refrigerate perilla oil? It oxidizes faster, and both the smell and taste shift for the worse. If it smells off, the safe move is to throw it out rather than use it.

Is it okay to stir-fry with perilla oil? In a dish with enough liquid that the oil's temperature stays well below its smoke point, yes. Extended high-heat frying or deep-frying is where it becomes a bad idea.

Which oil is actually healthier — sesame or perilla? There's no clean answer. Perilla oil has the omega-3 advantage, but it demands more careful freshness management. Sesame oil is more stable but lower in omega-3. It comes down to what you're using it for and how well you can store it.

What to Do Next

Sesame oil and perilla oil aren't two versions of "the nutty Korean oil." They come from unrelated plants and bring genuinely different character to a dish.

Three things to try right now:

1. If your perilla oil has been sitting at room temperature, move it to the fridge today.
2. Tonight, finish a fried egg or steamed egg with a few drops of perilla oil instead of sesame oil.
3. Next time you're seasoning a strong-smelling vegetable, try perilla oil in place of sesame oil and see what it does.

TL;DR

1. Sesame oil comes from sesame seeds, perilla oil from perilla seeds — two entirely unrelated plant families, not variants of one plant.
2. Perilla oil's low tolerance for heat isn't about its smoke point, which is similar to sesame oil's — it's about how fast it oxidizes, which is why refrigeration is non-negotiable.
3. Finish a fried egg or a bowl of kimchi jjigae with perilla oil instead of sesame oil, and the dish moves into a different register entirely.

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Related reading: Duck You Pay For, Beef You Eat If Someone Else Is Buying → (the perilla-oil sujebi finisher) · One Pot, Three Meals → (the sesame-oil-and-salt dip)

Sources: 나무위키 — 들기름; 삼성서울병원 — 참기름과 들기름 이야기; 농민신문 — 기름 보관법; Perilla frutescens — Wikipedia