White Sesame Seeds - Hulled, Raw, Simsim

These are white sesame seeds, the small, flat, teardrop-shaped seeds of the sesame plant, Sesamum indicum, sold in every Egyptian spice shop as simsim. They are hulled: the thin outer skin has been taken off, which leaves them cream-white, smooth and mild. And they are raw, which means not toasted, so they are the starting point rather than the finished topping, and you decide how golden to take them.

Raw, the taste is gentle: milky and faintly nutty. Toasting is what brings sesame to life. Shake the seeds in a dry pan over medium heat for a few minutes and they turn golden, start to jump and smell of roasted nuts. Take them off the heat a moment before they look ready and tip them onto a cold plate, because they keep cooking in the hot pan and go from golden to bitter quickly.

In Egypt sesame belongs to the bakery and the sweet shop. It coats simit, the bread rings sold from street carts in the morning, and the tops of rusks, biscuits and many savoury pastries. Ground into a paste it becomes tahini, the base of tahina sauce for ful, falafel and grilled fish. Beaten with sugar it becomes halawa, the dense sesame sweet eaten at breakfast, and set in caramel it becomes simsimiya, the sesame brittle of the mulid season.

Use it on anything that goes into an oven. Brush a loaf, rolls or flatbread with egg, milk or water and scatter the seeds on before baking, where they toast in the oven heat. Toast a spoonful in a dry pan and scatter it over salads, rice, noodles, roast vegetables or grilled chicken. Press the seeds onto fish or chicken before frying for a crisp crust, or stir toasted seeds into honey for a quick sweet topping.

Sesame is also what gives two of the blends in this shop their crunch: our Za'atar mixes it with thyme and sumac, and our Egyptian Dukkah pounds it with hazelnuts, almonds, coriander and cumin. A pouch of plain sesame lets you add more to either, or make your own. For tahini at home, toast the seeds lightly, let them cool and grind them with a little neutral oil until smooth.

Sesame is one of the major food allergens, and for some people even a few seeds can cause a serious reaction. This pouch contains SESAME. Keep it away from food for anyone with a sesame allergy, and remember that the small seeds scatter and turn up on boards, in bread baskets and in other jars. We cannot confirm that it was packed away from nuts or other seeds, so if you have another food allergy as well, ask us before you order.

Two things this page does not claim. We have not been able to confirm where these seeds were grown, so no country is named here, and they reach us sold simply as hulled white sesame, so there is no promise that nothing else was added. Sesame is also widely sold with long lists of claimed effects, and this listing repeats none of them. It is sold as food, and nothing here is a health claim or medical advice.

Sesame seeds hold a lot of oil, which is what makes them taste rich and also what makes them go stale. Keep the pouch sealed, cool and dark, and in a hot kitchen keep it in the fridge. Toast only what you need, shortly before you use it, because toasted seeds lose their fresh taste within days. If raw seeds ever smell sharp or like old oil instead of mildly nutty, they have gone rancid and are best thrown away.