Too many sesame seed stashed or making hummus from scratch? Let’s check this Tahini recipe that sneakily turns every dish the best!
It is interesting how small details can overtake large proportions of our life while those things that are common can go unnoticed for apportionately long time.
We do similar things in many aspects of our life. Just think about politics where committed voters represent about 80 – 90% of the electorate. Its fascinating that they are equally split among the party lines year after year but what more interesting is that they don’t need convincing.
These people always voted and will highly likely to vote to the same party all in their lifetime with or without any external influence like ads, rallies or social media campaigns.
Then there is the remaining 10 – 20% (or even 7% in 2016) of people who have not the slightest clue about what’s going on in the country, yet every 4 years politicians forced to spend egregious amount of money to convince them to vote in their favor.
The most annoying of all is that anyone, who has their mind made up already, is forced to listen, watch, live through the campaign that most of the time is not even targeted at them.
Of course, this does not just happen in politics but in every aspects of our life where mass marketing is present and people make money by convincing others about something.
If grocery stores can sell a box of something to thirty more people by playing Celine Dione, reorganizing the shelves layout or stamp “healthy” with trendy letters and colors on the boxes, the remaining 70, who don’t care or flat out irritated by it, will get it too.
Although many of these things seem trivial at first but over long term, they cause sesmic changes that affect many aspects of our life. This is why we have oversized cereal boxes, highly visual packaging, brand mascots or sugar in every edible thing imaginable.
Interestingly, these things are so sneakily ingrained into our days that we do not even notice their existence and their real influence on our life until we force ourselves to stop on our tracks and highlight them to be seen.
Tahini is a Middle-Eastern sauce, made of the toasted seeds of sesame plant. Since some Asian cuisines also use ground sesame seed paste, it’s easy to mistake one with the other which isn’t really surprising at all since the only difference, that exist between the two, is in their name.
The word “Tahini” originally means to grind which fits the process perfectly as once the sesame seeds are toasted, they are ground to flour then used as dips or as ingredients in another condiments or dishes.
Sesame seeds are one of the oldest memories of human kind as records of instruction, to prepare sesame seed wine to the gods, are found on 4000 years old Mesopotamian (modern day Iran) clay tablets.
Cookbooks were somewhat rare at those times so we do not really know much about when and how Tahini came to our tables but since grinding seeds into paste isn’t such a mysterious preparation method, we can safely assume that Tahini was used many years before it first appeared in a 13th century Arabic cookbook.
Once it was highlighted for everybody to see, Tahini could expand its influence around the world. As with everything pre-internet and globalization, it took a couple of years to Tahini or toasted ground sesame seed to reach international audiences. Although, it has never been as convincing as the sugar-soaked ketchup, it managed to carve itself a loyal niche following especially among fans of hummus and various Arabic dishes.
Nowadays, Tahini can be bought almost everywhere easily but if we have some sesame seeds at home, we can just as easily make one without running the risk of listen to Celine Dion, except, of course, if we want to.
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons / 30g Cooking oil (more for thinner consistency)
- 1 cup / 150g Sesame seed
- 1 teaspoon / 5g Salt
How to make Tahini
- In a skillet, heat oil to medium then add in the sesame seeds.
- Roast the sesame seeds while stir continuously to avoid burning, about 4 minutes. Burnt sesame seeds will taste bitter, sour and bad so avoid it at all costs.
- For more intense flavor, roast to darker golden brown, about 2 more minutes. Mind that after taking the seeds off heat, they will keep roasting a bit from the residual heat.
- Put the seeds into a food processor. Add some salt too.
- Process the roasted sesame seeds. Gradually, add more oil for thinner consistency.
Enjoy!
FitttZee
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Tahini Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons Cooking oil more for thinner consistency
- 1 cup Sesame seed
- 1 teaspoon Salt
Instructions
- In a skillet, heat oil to medium then add in the sesame seeds.
- Roast the sesame seeds while stir continuously to avoid burning, about 4 minutes. Burnt sesame seeds will taste bitter, sour and bad so avoid it at all costs.
- For more intense flavor, roast to darker golden brown, about 2 more minutes. Mind that after taking the seeds off heat, they will keep roasting a bit from the residual heat.
- Put the seeds into a food processor. Add some salt too.
- Process the roasted sesame seeds. Gradually, add more oil for thinner consistency.
Notes
Pin now, Enjoy later!
