Home Made Tahini

Make Your Own Tahini Sesame Seed Paste

© Joanne E. Brannan

Apr 6, 2008
Sesame Seeds, Joanne E Brannan
Tahini is an essential ingredient in Middle Eastern dishes such as humous and falafel. A simple, cheap recipe for homemade tahini.

Tahini, or sesame seed paste, may be made of hulled or whole sesame seeds. This recipe for home made tahini, using a food processor with metal blades, uses whole sesame seeds which is more nutritious, but it does have a slightly stronger taste than tahini made with hulled seeds. The texture may also be slightly coarser than store bought tahni, but it has the same delicious flavor, and may be far cheaper!

When you make your own tahini, you are on your way to making tasty homemade homous and falafel which are delicious and cheap to make.

Sesame seeds are rich in minerals such as calcium, zinc and manganese. They also contain useful quantities of some B group vitamins including thiamin and B6, and are a useful source of vegetable protein. Sesame seeds are a useful addition to your diet, particularly if you eat little or no meat. It is said that the nutrients of sesame are more easily absorbed when the seeds are ground, as is the case in tahini.

Ingredients

It is worth making tahini in bulk to reduce waste as the sticky paste is difficult to empty cleanly from your food processor. This is the proportion of oil to sesame seeds to use, increase the quantities to suit your needs

¼ cup vegetable oil to 1 cup sesame seeds

Method

Preheat your oven to 340°F (170° C).

  • Spread your sesame seeds on a roasting tray, and toast in the oven for 15 minutes, stirring regularly to toast evenly. Do not allow to brown as this impairs the flavor.
  • Remove the sesame seeds from the oven and allow to cool briefly.
  • Put the toasted sesame seeds in your food processor, with metal blades fitted, and add half the oil.
  • Process the mixture on a high setting for a minute, stopping to clean the sides of the food processor with a spatula from time to time.
  • Add the rest of the oil, and continue to process the seeds to a paste, again cleaning the sides regularly and ensuring that the paste still covers the blades. Ensure that all the mix is blended to a paste. This can be a somewhat messy process but stick with it. The results will be worth it!
  • When the mixture is evenly smooth, and further processing does not further refine the texture, transfer your tahini to a tight fitting glass jar using a flexible spatula, if you have one, to reduce waste.

Tahini may be kept in the refrigerator for many weeks in a well sealed jar.

Home made tahini is just one idea on how to save money on food while eating well.

Related Articles

Readers may also enjoy this recipe for Home Made Houmous along with these tips on Casual Vegetarian Entertaining. And for another technique for saving money and eating well How to Make Yoghurt.


The copyright of the article Home Made Tahini in Middle Eastern Cuisine is owned by Joanne E. Brannan. Permission to republish Home Made Tahini in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.


Sesame Seeds, Joanne E Brannan
       


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Comments
May 23, 2009 12:29 AM
Guest :
thx so much for this...for the oil tho..couldnt we just use olive oil instead of veg to make it healthier??
May 23, 2009 1:35 AM
Joanne E. Brannan :
thank you! Yes olive oil would work fine here. My only suggestion is that if you plan to use the tahini in a recipe that is cooked at a high temperature (for example falafel) you might like to think about the stability of olive oil. I know that, for example, extra virgin olive oil is not recommended for high temparature cooking. But for making houmous, extra virgin olive oil in the tahini would work fine.
Aug 13, 2009 8:12 AM
Guest :
I'm trying to eat more of a raw diet. Just wondering if tahini can be made with raw sesame seeds?
Aug 13, 2009 8:51 AM
Joanne E. Brannan :
I have never tried making tahini with raw sesame seeds, but I think it would definitely be worth a try. If anything the seeds would be a little softer so easier to process in the food processor. The roasting is to add flavor, so it may well have a milder flavor when made with raw sesame seeds.
Aug 24, 2009 5:19 AM
Guest :
Thanks for this perfectly simple recipe. I used sesame oil and it's a nice, intense paste perfect for Asian cooking.
Aug 25, 2009 4:48 PM
Guest :
Thank you for the wonderful recipe and answers to questions. This is the only recipe in which an explanation of hulled/unhulled sesame seeds was mentioned. Your thoroughness is very mush appreciated.
Sep 7, 2009 3:04 PM
Guest :
Thanks so much for the info. In reading that it is better to make a large quantity because of clean-up, would it be beneficial to make the amount of tahini needed for a particular recipe, in the blender, and then continue with making the recipe for which you are making the tahini?

I am thinking about this in regards to Baba Ghanouj. (I know, I know, a purest would never use a blender for Baba Ghanouj, but I used it for coarser parts of the eggplant (maybe I did not cook it long enough?) and then incorporated the eggplant that I could smash with a fork into the blended portion.)

If I make the tahini and then add the other ingredients to fulfill the recipe for the B.G., I assume the clean-up would be less difficult as the paste would then blend well into the entire mix.

Thanks for your input !
7 Comments