Taiwan Organic Sesame Oil, Nourishing Oil with Strong Fragrance

The warm and moist growing environment at 20-25 degrees is the best for sesame. To stay away from floods, the shallow-rooted plants should be grown in loose and fertile soil with good drainage and exposed to a large amount of sun. Tainan No.1 is the major type in Taiwan produced in Tainan, Chiayi, and Yunlin, especially in Tainan, the town of Sesame. There are also young farmers growing sesame in Hualien and Kaohsiung. The organic sesame farmers face two major problems. One is the weeds that have to be pulled by hand. The other is powdery mildew that can be prevented with narrow range oil. As the farmers said, “The spring crops are easy to grow but hard to harvest. The autumn crops are hard to grow but easy to harvest.” To avoid natural disasters, most of them choose to grow sesame in autumn. Thirty days after sowing, the sesame plants grow tall and have light purple flowers. They can be harvested after two months.

The harvest of organic sesame takes a lot of labor. From picking, drying, beating, to filtering, every step can hardly be done with machines. Every plant has to be picked by hand, and ten to twenty plants are tied into a bunch. Four bunches standing in a heap are dried in the sun for thirty days. After they turn from green to brown, open the pods, turn the plants upside down at 45 degrees, and beat them with a wooden stick. Then the small sesame grains just come out.

In modern time, most of the oil is manufactured with machines. However, the traditional procedure of oil making in Taiwan is worth knowing. First, fry the sesame grains in the roller heated by firewood. The fire and time have to be controlled by men depending on the different sesame maturity of every season. It takes experience to add or subtract wood. From dry roasting, heat dissipation, grounding, boiling, machine molding and packaging, pressing in horizontal oil press machines, settling, filtering, to bottling, every drop of sesame oil is the crystal of traditional wisdom.

Black sesame oil is nourishing to women’s postpartum recovery and therefore called “postpartum sesame oil.” According to Shennong"s Classic of Materia Medica, sesame “tastes sweet and mild, benefits the liver and kidney, nourishes organs, strengthens bones, brightens eyes, builds muscles, and nurtures brains.” Besides sesame oil, sesame sauce, sesame powder and instant drinks are also the public favorites.