The Scent of Sesame: Making Oil the Old-Fashioned Way

Tainan’s An­ding, Shan­hua, and Xi­gang Districts are the heartland of Taiwanese sesame, and celebrate that fact with a jointly hosted sesame festival during the November harvest. They share huge pots of sesame-oil chicken with visitors in a fragrant fête announcing the start of the area’s sesame season.

Sesame is harvested by hand. Pulled up with their roots and bound into bundles, the plants are left in the fields to dry for four or five days before being threshed. (courtesy of Anding District Farmers’ Association)

A hot product

Sesame seeds come in main two varieties: white and black. Oil pressed from the white variety is referred to as xiang­you (“fragrant oil”) in Mandarin, while the oil pressed from the black variety is called ma­you (“sesame oil”). All of the white sesame consumed in Taiwan is imported. And while Taiwan does grow black sesame, domestic demand far outstrips local production.

You Tian-long, director of the Puzi Branch of the Tai­nan District Agricultural Research and Extension Station, says that in 1961 Taiwan cultivated 8,845 hectares of sesame, which yielded 4,501 metric tons of sesame seeds. The amount of sesame cultivation has fallen greatly since then, with rising production costs leading farmers to switch to other crops. Nowadays, Taiwan has only 831 hectares in sesame, and the harvest is down to just 620 tons, well short of the more than 30,000 tons the island consumes.

In 2012, the government began amending its fallow-fields subsidies to nudge Taiwan towards greater self-sufficiency in food production. To that end, it has encouraged farmers to grow more of the crops that Taiwan imports in large volumes, including sesame.

Tainan is Taiwan’s primary sesame growing area. According to the Tai­nan City Agriculture Bureau, Shan­hua, Xi­gang and An­ding together have 709 hectares of land in sesame and produced 553 tons of seeds in 2015, which was about 85% of Taiwan’s total sesame production.

The fertile soil of An­ding, located along the banks of the Zeng­wen River near Tai­nan City’s Shan­hua and An­nan Districts, has made it Taiwan’s principal sesame growing area.

Wang Pao-ming, general manager of the An­ding District Farmers’ Association, says that government incentives have led to a steady increase in An­ding’s sesame acreage to more than 200 hectares over the last few years. Offering this year as an example, he says that his association already has more than 100 farmers registered for its fall sesame harvest event. These farmers collectively have some 30 hectares in sesame and are expected to produce a total of around 29,000 kilograms of seeds.

Consumers trust sesame oil certified as “authentic” by local agricultural associations because such oils are locally produced from locally grown ingredients, with strict oversight throughout the process.

Wang says that consumers have proved willing to pay a significant premium for authentic Taiwanese sesame, which costs three times more than imported sesame oils. “Business has been so good over the last couple of years that we don’t have any oil left to sell,” laughs Wang.

Tainan’s Anding District is Taiwan’s sesame heartland. In the photo, farmers dry seeds in the courtyard of their home. (courtesy of Anding District Farmers’ Association)

Ducking monsoon and typhoon

The An­ding District Farmers’ Association and local farmers produce sesame oil on a contract basis. The association provides Tai­nan No. 1 sesame seed stock (a variety developed by the Tai­nan Agricultural Research and Extension Station in 1992) to farmers and guarantees it will purchase their crops at a given price. In recent years, this price has averaged more than NT$100 per Taiwanese catty (600 grams). After the harvest, the association hires a presser to press the oil, and then packages and sells it.   

The association manages every step of the process to maintain the quality and reputation of its product. Wang Chi-mei, the association’s sales director, says that in addition to providing farmers with the seeds they grow, it also checks the harvested crop for more than 300 agricultural chemicals, and assigns staffers to monitor the manufacture of its oil.

Growing and harvesting sesame remains a risky and difficult endeavor even with the support the government has provided to local farmers in recent years.

Wang Chao-hsun, head of the An­ding farmers’ association’s sesame production and marketing group, has been growing sesame for more than 30 years and says that the weather has an outsized impact on growing sesame. “The spring crop grows well but is difficult to harvest. The fall crop is hard to grow but easy to harvest.”

He explains that the spring crop gets harvested during the spring monsoon. “Three or four days of rain in a row can wipe out the entire harvest.” The fall crop, on the other hand, has to be planted in the seventh month of the lunar calendar, before the “White Dew” solar term (roughly September 8‡22). But this is typhoon season. If one strikes during this period, farmers must rush to get a new crop in the ground before the Mid-Autumn Festival.

With their green foliage and white flowers, sesame plants can grow to more than head height. The seeds slowly darken within their pods, and are harvested once they become black. (courtesy of Anding District Farmers’ Association)

Every grain a toil

Making matters more difficult, sesame can’t be machine harvested.

Yang Zhang­chi, who grows sesame on several plots of land, observes that sesame is particularly labor intensive. “The harvest is especially so because the seedpods can pop open. It’s not like paddy rice or other crops that you can harvest by machine. Sesame has to be brought in by hand.”

Another interesting aspect of the sesame harvest is that farmers must first either pull up or cut the sesame plants, bind them together into bundles of a dozen or so, and then stand the bundles up in the field to dry. Four or five days later they thresh the bundles by hand to break the seeds loose.

In the case of sesame seeds, the old saying really is true: “Every grain is a toil.” Association general manager Wang Pao-ming says that farmers would be much more interested in growing sesame if it could be machine harvested. “If someone could develop a variety with a seedpod that didn’t split so easily, we could harvest it using machines.”

The scent of sesame-oil chicken pervades the opening of Tainan’s November sesame festival. In the photo, Wang Pao-ming, general manager of the Anding District Farmers’ Association, demonstrates how to cook the dish. (courtesy of Anding District Farmers’ Association)

An unrefined oil

Oil pressing is a traditional An­ding industry. In fact, the district used to be known as “oil roller,” a name that, according to the township’s records, dates back to the early Qing Dynasty. The township is still in the business, with four or five of its old oil presses still operating today.

The pressing process itself is straightforward. First, you toast the sesame seeds. Controlling the temperature of the toast is crucial; it can’t be too hot or too cool. “Master pressers use their experience to judge it,” says Wang Chi-mei.

The association produces two types of sesame oil, qing and hu, differentiated by the temperature to which they are heated and how they are pressed. For qing sesame oil, the seeds are heated to a relatively low temperature, which produces an amber-colored oil with a more delicate flavor appropriate for everyday applications. Pressed at a higher temperature, hu sesame oil is darker and more robustly flavored. “To produce qing oil you have to keep the temperature under 180°C,” explains Wang Chi-mei. “For hu, it’s around 200°C.”

The seeds are first crushed, and then steamed. This hot mass is wrapped in cloth and shaped into cakes, then pressed at low temperature. One kilogram of sesame seeds yields roughly 250 milliliters of oil.

The Anding District Farmers’ Association has contracts with more than 100 farmers to grow sesame, yet demand for its sesame oil has outstripped supplies for the last few years. Wang Chi-mei, the association’s marketing director, is second from the left in the photo.

Tasty and healthy

While Taiwan doesn’t produce sesame seeds in large volumes, those it does grow are of better quality than the imported variety. Domestically grown sesame seeds are “plump, thin-skinned, and flavorful, and have a high oil content,” attributes that the imported seeds can’t match.

Made with superior seeds, domestically produced sesame oil is naturally of higher quality and has better mouthfeel than imported oil. “Oils pressed from imported seeds lose their flavor when heated and so add nothing to dishes cooked with them. Domestically produced oils remain flavorful when cooked,” Wang Chao-shun proudly declares.

For most Taiwanese, sesame oil is a nutritional supplement inextricably connected to the winter season and to the month after childbirth.

Practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine believe that sesame oil supplements the blood, eases constipation, darkens hair, increases lactation, and improves muscle tone. It is therefore ideal for women recovering from childbirth, who need to boost their qi and fortify their blood.

In fact, sesame oil is good for everyone year round, not just postpartum women. Some 90% of the fat in sesame oil is unsaturated fat, which is an essential component of cell structure and great for the body. It also contains protein, fat, iron, calcium, phosphorous, and vitamins B1, B2, A, D, and E.

However, even the best oil will begin to break down once it reaches its smoke point, which for sesame oil is between 160° and 170°C. So, while it is a tasty oil for stir frying vegetables, nutritionists recommend using it as part of a mix of water and oil to keep the temperature down.

Healthy and delicious, locally produced sesame oil is entirely deserving of its reputation as high-quality oil.

The Anding District Farmers’ Association tests its contract farmers’ sesame for traces of more than 300 agricultural chemicals, only making oil from those seeds that meet its standards.

The Anding District Farmers’ Association produces two types of sesame oil, qing and hu. Toasted and pressed at different temperatures, qing oil is delicately flavored, while hu is more robust.