Toasted Sesame Oil

This is a great condiment to have around and super simple to make. After making it I find myself using it more and more often to pep up everything from fried food to salad dressing and dipping sauces. This recipe has a number of virtues:

1. Cheap: you make a large batch from a cheaper neutral flavoured oil.
2. This sesame oil can be used at high temperature (unlike oil derived from sesame seeds, which has a low smoke point) i.e. to fry meat, vegetables, etc.
3. Crunchy delicious seeds (if you desire).

Ingredients:

100g sesame seeds

1 litre neutral oil (e.g. Rapeseed or groundnut).

Toast the sesame seeds

On a medium heat toast the seeds in a dry pan. Keep the seeds moving with a spatula so that they don't burn, and toast evenly. You want a light brown colour.

Infuse into oil

Add your oil to the pan you've toasted the seeds in and turn off the heat. The oil should warm up but not be so hot as to start frying the seeds (as they will then burn). Leave to cool.

Decant into bottle

Decant the oil, seeds included into a bottle for final use. You can remove the seeds if you like but I find them a wonderful option to add to sauces and dressings when using the oil. To use the oil for frying you don't want the seeds to come out with the oil as the seeds will burn when you are frying other foods at a high temperature e.g. steak or charring vegetables. To that end cut some muslin cloth and secure it to the top of your bottle with some elastic bands. You can easily slip this cloth off when you want some seeds in the mix.

That's it!