In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been obsessed with tahini lately. I love how something so simple, a paste made from sesame seeds, can add so much flavor to anything from no bean Paleo hummus to freezer fudge. And for people with nut allergies, it can stand in for peanut butter ridiculously well, like in this Paleo “Peanut Butter” Pie I made.
The downside, though, is that since a good organic tahini should not have any ingredients in it other than sesame seeds, it often separates. Without those common chemical emulsifiers and stabilizers, you usually end up with a hard, dry paste on the bottom of the jar, with a thick film of oil on the top. Which is a problem when you’re trying to use it – you need both the paste and the oil combined in recipes that call for tahini! I used to spend way too much time trying to stir the two layers together in the original jar. What used to happen is that I would splash sesame seed oil everywhere and STILL not have a nice smooth paste. Did I mention the greasy countertops? Blech!
So here is my super easy way to stop tahini separating! All you need to to is take it all out of the original jar and put it into a mini food processor. Process it until it is all smooth – make sure to hold on to the processor to keep it steady as there are some big lumps of sesame that it is trying to get through! When everything is smooth, decant the tahini back into a clean jar or two. Store your now-smooth tahini in the fridge and it won’t separate again, but it WILL stay smooth enough that measuring it out for recipes is a breeze! Yay!
This is a fantastic tip… thankyou. off to process my tahini in the food processor!
Yay! It’s SO much easier than trying to mix it in the jar every time! 🙂
Thanks so much! I’ve been searching high and low for the answer to this tahini problem 😀 God bless people like who take the time out to share these things!