The content of ethyl maltol in special sampling samples of edible vegetable oils was determined by ultra performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry to understand the illegal addition of ethyl maltol. The chromatographic column used in this method was ZORBAX SB-C18 column (2.0×100 mm, 1.8 μm), and mobile phase was 0.1% formic acid solution-acetonitrile with gradient elution. The flow rate was 0.2 mL/min, and the column temperature was 40 ℃. The results showed that ethyl maltol had a good linear relationship in the concentration range of 10~100 ng/mL with the correlation coefficient R2 0.999 8, and the average recovery rate of added standard was 99.9% with and the relative standard deviation (RSD) 0.31%. Ethyl maltol in 83 batches of edible vegetable oil was determined by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, and the content of ethyl maltol in 1 batch of peanut oil was 36.4 μ g/kg. This study could be used for the quality control of edible vegetable oil and also provide scientific reference for the supervision of edible vegetable oil.