Organic Unrefined Sesame Oil

16 oz. amber glass jar
Retail: $8.42
Now: $7.65

32 oz. amber glass jar
Retail: $16.13
Now: $14.66

Sesame oil is a traditional oil that has been used in various cultures around the world for at least 5000 years. Archeological excavations throughout the Middle East revealed the use of sesame oil dating back to 3000 BC. Persia and India were also cultivating this tiny treasure for its oil. Sesame oil was the ideal base for making exotic perfumes, a practice that dates back to the Babylonians circa 2100 to 689 BC. The Babylonians also used the oil for cooking, and sesame cakes. They also made wine from sesame and even perfected a brandy employing sesame seeds.

The Chinese used the oil not only as a light source but also to create soot from which they made their superior stick ink over 5,000 years ago. Ancient Chinese calligraphic works of art using stick ink made from sesame oil may still be in existence in museums.

Palace records of Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, 6th century BC, were carefully kept on clay tablets. One of the entries mentions a purchase of sesame oil. Records show that the Egyptians used the oil about 1500 BC as ceremonial purification. Historians such as 4th century Theophrastus, mention that sesame seeds were cultivated in Egypt. During that same period, Africa, too, cultivated the sesame seed in Ethiopia, the Sudan, and what was once Tanganyika.

Sprinkling sesame seeds on breads before baking them probably feels like a 20th century culinary innovation, but history reveals that it’s not. The ancient tombs of important Egyptian nobles were decorated with colorful paintings. One tomb, dating back 4,000 years, contains a scene of a baker sprinkling sesame seeds into his dough. Dioscorides, a 1st century AD historian, tells us the Sicilian bakers were eagerly sprinkling sesame seeds on their breads centuries ago.

The Europeans encountered the sesame seeds when they were imported from India during the 1st century AD. Even the Venetian traveler, Marco Polo, was taken by the outstanding flavor of sesame oil that he tasted in Abyssinia, proclaiming it the best he had ever tasted.

Benniseeds or benne seeds, as sesame seeds were called in the Bantu dialect, arrived in the United States with the West African slaves who brought only a few precious possessions with them. During the 17th and 18th centuries slave traders were running slave ships to the Southern States and the Caribbean. In Charleston, South Carolina and New Orleans, Louisiana, benniseeds were considered good luck and incorporated into many dishes that are still used in Southern cooking.

During the 1930s, the major vegetable oil used by Americans was sesame oil. At that time the United States was importing 58,000,000 pounds of sesame seeds a year mostly for producing oil. Two events combined to shift the importing of these huge quantities of sesame seeds to a diminished 12 million pounds by the early 1950s: World War II and the development of inexpensive soybean and cottonseed oils.

Sesame oil is rich in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids. Unlike most other modern-day oils containing high amounts of polyunsaturated oil, sesame oil is not prone to oxidation due to the presence of sesamin and sesamol, natural antioxidants. This sesame oil is organic, expeller cold-pressed, and lightly filtered retaining all of sesame’s unique aroma and rich flavor. It is nitrogen flushed and bottled in protective amber glass.

See also our organic raw Tahini (sesame seed paste).

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trans fat free!

Organic Sesame Oil