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Sesame seeds

Seeds

Sesame seeds

Sesamum indicum

Tiny, flat, oily seeds, white or black; toasted for bread toppings, Asian dishes, tahini and sweets.

Also called: sesame, til, susam, gingelly, ajonjolí

  • Nutty & toasty
  • No heat
Buying & storing112 recipes

Photo: ally j, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0-1.0)

Flavour and aroma

nutty, toasty, rich, slightly bitter when black. Nutty; deeply toasty when roasted.

Heat
No heat
Forms
whole, paste, ground

How to use it

  • dry roast · Spice roasting (dry-roasting) technique

    Toast in a dry pan over medium-low heat for 3–5 minutes, stirring constantly, until golden and some begin to pop. Tip out at once; they keep darkening in the hot pan.

  • grind · Dry grinding technique

    Grind toasted seeds in a suribachi or mortar for Japanese goma-ae dressing; stop while still coarse and fragrant.

  • use raw

    Raw hulled seeds go onto breads and bagels before baking, where they toast in the oven.

  • Sprinkled on bread, bagels, simit and burger buns
  • Toasted over Korean, Japanese and Chinese dishes
  • Ground into tahini, gomasio and black sesame paste
  • Made into halva, til ladoo and sesame brittle

Identifying good quality

Small, flat, teardrop-shaped seeds. Hulled seeds are creamy white; unhulled are beige; black sesame is a different variety with a stronger, more bitter taste. Smell for rancidity: fresh seeds smell faintly nutty, old ones like stale oil.

Origin and history

Origin: Domesticated in the Indian subcontinent from a wild South Asian relative; wild Sesamum species also grow in Africa.. Grown and used: Major producers include Sudan, Myanmar, Tanzania, India, Nigeria and China; eaten across Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas..

Sesame is one of the oldest oilseed crops: charred seeds have been found at Harappan sites in the Indus Valley from the third millennium BCE, and it was traded to Mesopotamia early. Today it underpins tahini and halva in the Middle East, sesame oil and pastes in China, Korea and Japan, and benne seed traditions brought to the American South by enslaved West Africans.

Well documented

In masalas, pastes and sauces

Recipes with sesame seeds

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