Tahini Paste

I've had a jar of sesame seeds in my cupboard for ages. I have tried using them as a coating for chicken goujons but they always burn and leave a bitter aftertaste. So I decided to make my own tahini paste. Tahini paste is normally used in hummus which is of course out of limits if you are on a low FODMAP diet as it uses garlic and chickpeas, but there are other uses for it:

• use it instead of peanut butter
• make a sun-dried tomato “hummus” with sun-dried tomatoes, tahini, oil and lemon juice (see pic)
• make Baba Ghanoush with pureed aubergine, tahini, lemon juice and oil
• make tahini sauce: combine ½ cup of tahini paste, 1 tbsp olive oil, a pinch of fresh parsley, salt and pepper and blend until smooth. Add water and lemon juice to the mix to your taste and until you get the desired texture
• use it as a sweet spread: mix the tahini paste with sugar
• use as a dip with crudite or roasted vegetables

Here is how you make the tahini paste:

You will need 3 cups of sesame seeds and ¼ to ½ cup of olive, peanut or vegetable oil but don't use extra-virgin olive oil.

Spread the sesame seeds out on a baking sheet. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Place the sheet in the oven for about 10 minutes to lightly roast the sesame seeds. Stir the seeds once at about 5 minutes and stir again when you remove them from the oven. Do not brown the seeds or they will taste bitter. Most of the commercial tahini is hulled tahini and therefore less bitter (the seeds are crushed and soaked in salt water to remove the hulls, maybe I'll try this someday...). Pour the toasted sesame seeds into a food processor with the knife blade and on a high speed. Then pour in the olive oil and blend until smooth, adding more oil 1 tablespoon at a time if the paste seems too thick. The blending took about 10 minutes and I had to scrape the edges every couple of minutes or so. Store it in the fridge for up to 4 weeks.

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