Sesame Salt – Gomashio
Sesame salt is a nutritious and delicious addition to home cooked food. Gomashio is the Japanese term and comes from Goma (Sesame) and Shio (Salt). From a chemical-nutrition perspective, the seeds are high in many minerals, especially calcium.
Sesamum indicum
In the Ayurvedic tradition, sesame is warming, nourishing and grounding and helps reduce Vata. In TCM, black sesame seeds are considered a Yin tonic. Brown seeds have the same properties, just on a reduced scale.
To Make Sesame Salt
Pour 1 Cup of unhulled raw seeds into a fry pan. Stir constantly over medium heat until the seeds begin to pop. They will give off a wonderful toasted nut aroma at this point.
Turn off the heat and let seeds cool for a few minutes so they don’t make the blender (in the next step) too hot.
Pour toasted seeds into the blender. Turn on low-medium speed for a short time. The seeds should be roughly ground, similar to corn meal. If the blender is on too high or too long, the ground seeds will become sesame butter, also known as tahini. While tahini is a great food, it is not sesame salt so you want to avoid this. Grinding the seeds in this manner makes them much easier to digest than whole seeds.
Pour the roughly ground seeds into a bowl. Mix in 1 teaspoon of sea salt and stir well. The toasted seeds have a salty flavor of their own so not much extra salt is needed. Add salt to your individual preference but be aware it is easy to overdo the salty flavor.
Keep the sesame salt refrigerated. A one cup batch will be used quickly and keeping it fresh should not be an issue.
We add sesame salt to hearty winter stews and stir frys. It is delicious mixed into a bowl of brown rice and the flavor goes very well with ginger. It has long been a winter staple at our dinner table.