Black Sesame Seeds: What Makes Them Black, How They Taste and How to Use Them

Black sesame seeds taste stronger than white ones: roasty, a little bitter, and great in sweets. You’ll often read that they’re just unhulled white sesame, but they’re not. They’re the same species (Sesamum indicum), but from cultivars with a dark seed coat. In Chinese cooking they go into sweet black sesame soup, tang yuan, ice cream and cake. Toast them first, and since you can’t see dark seeds brown, go by smell.

At a glance

What makes black sesame black

Seed color comes down to the cultivar. Sesame comes in white, off-white, yellow-white, grey, brown and black seeded types. The color lives in the seed coat. A 2022 study in Frontiers in Nutrition pulled the dark pigment out of black sesame seed coats and found it similar to melanin from other sources. The same authors report that flavonoid content in sesame rises as the coat gets darker.¹

You’ll often read that black sesame is just unhulled sesame, and that hulling is the only difference between black and white. That’s not right. Black seeds come from dark-coated cultivars,¹ and sesame is sold both whole and hulled. Hulling does change what’s in the seed, though. USDA data put whole toasted sesame at 989 mg calcium per 100 g, against 131 mg for hulled, toasted kernels.⁶⁷ USDA’s sesame entries don’t say what color the seed was.

For how the two differ in the kitchen, see black vs. white sesame seeds and hulled vs. unhulled sesame seeds.

Flavor and the compounds behind it

Katzer describes dried sesame as nutty, with the flavor dramatically boosted by toasting, and says pyrazines dominate the flavor under mild toasting (160 °C).⁴ Sesame seed is also rich in phytic and oxalic acid, which with calcium give it a slightly bitter taste.³

Black sesame tastes stronger, earthier and a little more bitter than white, and the intact coat gives it more crunch.

The oil carries the lignans sesamin (0.1–0.6%) and sesamolin (0.25–0.3%), which PROSEA credits with giving sesame oil its remarkable resistance to oxidation.³

Origin and history

Sources don’t agree on where sesame first grew wild:

The early record goes back a long way. Sesame dug up at Harappa (Pakistan) has been dated to 2000 BC. The Egyptian “Medical Papyrus” of Thebes, from about 1500 BC, lists sesame oil and seed among its remedies. And by the 6th century BC, sesame was so important in China that it was used as currency.³

The word. English “sesame” comes through Latin sesamum from Greek sēsamon, which the Online Etymology Dictionary traces, via Phoenician, to Late Babylonian shawash-shammu. Assyrian shamash-shammu means “oil-seed.” “Open sesame” entered English in a 1722 translation of the Thousand and One Nights.⁸ Related names include modern Arabic as-simsim.

Benne in the American South. The Charleston County Public Library says “benne” is one of several West African names for sesame. The traditional account holds that it came to the Lowcountry with enslaved West Africans, who grew it in small private plots on rice plantations. The earliest record the library cites is a 1730 letter describing sesame grown in South Carolina.⁹

You may also run into claims that sesame shows up in an Assyrian creation myth, that ancient Chinese burned sesame oil for ink soot, that sesame came from the “Spice Isles,” or that Romans ground it with cumin into a spread. We couldn’t trace any of them, so they’re left out.

How black sesame seeds are used

• Chinese sweets. The Woks of Life describes sweet black sesame soup (zhī ma hú, 芝麻糊) as a traditional Chinese dessert made from toasted black sesame, black rice and a sweetener, and lists black sesame tang yuan, ice cream and cake among other black sesame desserts. The recipe says even pre-roasted seeds are worth a quick toast in a dry pan until fragrant.¹⁰
• Japanese condiments. Toasted sesame mixed with about 10% salt is the Japanese condiment gomashio.⁴ See gomasio, furikake and shichimi togarashi.
• Everyday use. Sprinkle them over rice, noodles, salads and roasted vegetables, press them onto tuna or chicken for a crust, or use them in breads and crackers where the color contrast counts.

Technique

Toast them in a dry pan over medium-low heat, shaking often, and stop when they smell nutty and start to pop. You can’t see dark seeds brown, so go by smell. For pastes and fillings, grind the toasted seeds just before you use them.

Production

PROSEA put world sesame seed production at 2.7 million tonnes in 2000, with India steady at about 500,000 t and Japan, Italy and China among the major markets.³ That figure is old and covers all sesame. We found no production figure for black sesame on its own, and we couldn’t reach FAOSTAT for a current total.

Nutrition

USDA’s entry for whole dried sesame seed (color not stated) gives, per tablespoon (9 g):¹¹

Per 100 g, the same entry gives 573 kcal, 17.7 g protein and 49.7 g fat.¹¹ Copper is the standout. The rest are modest at sprinkle-size amounts.

Health claims

A 2016 systematic review and meta-analysis of ten controlled trials in the British Journal of Nutrition found that eating sesame significantly lowered blood triglycerides, but the evidence for lowering cholesterol wasn’t enough. The triglyceride effect showed up for sesame oil, not whole or ground seeds, and the authors flagged the small number of trials and how much they varied.¹³ So that review doesn’t support the claim that black sesame seeds lower cholesterol. We’re not claiming black sesame treats or prevents heart disease, cancer or anything else.

Safety

Sesame is a major allergen. The FASTER Act, signed on 23 April 2021, made sesame the ninth major food allergen in the United States, effective 1 January 2023. US law requires labels to identify the food source of every major food allergen used to make a food.⁵

In July 2023, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf reported that some manufacturers had started adding sesame on purpose to products that didn’t contain it before. That keeps them compliant with the labeling law but narrows the options for people with a sesame allergy, and the FDA said it doesn’t support that outcome. The FDA advises checking the label every time you buy a product, because ingredients can change.¹⁴

Storage

Sesame seeds are about half fat by weight.¹¹ We couldn’t find a published shelf-life figure from a regulator or standards body. Keep them airtight somewhere cool and dark, or in the fridge or freezer for the long haul, and give them a sniff before using. A stale, paint-like or bitter smell means they’ve turned.

Substitutes and comparisons

White sesame seeds are the obvious swap, one for one by volume. They’re milder and look different.

• Sesame seeds
• Black vs. white sesame seeds
• Hulled vs. unhulled sesame seeds
• Sesame seed substitutes
• Gomasio, furikake and shichimi togarashi