Tahini, tahina, tahin or rashi: what is the difference?

Where the words come from

All four go back to the Arabic verb tahana, to grind. Arabic speakers ask for tahina, Greek cooks write tahini, Turkish and Dutch labels say tahin. English took the Greek spelling, which is why most recipes online use tahini.

Rashi is the word used in Amedi and across the Kurdistan region of Iraq, where our family has milled sesame since 1948. On a Kurdish breakfast table rashi stands next to dibs, a syrup of dates or grapes, and the two get stirred together on the plate.

What does change: how the seed is milled

The real difference between jars is not the name but the mill. Most supermarket tahini is ground at speed between steel rollers, which heats the paste and flattens its taste. We grind roasted sesame between granite millstones, slowly, the way it was done in 1948. The paste stays cooler, keeps more of its own oil and comes out lighter in colour.

You can read that off the label in ten seconds: the ingredient list of the Bayaz Tahini Box says one thing, 100% roasted sesame seed. No emulsifier, no added oil, no sugar.

Hulled or unhulled sesame

Hulled sesame makes a pale, mild tahini — this is what Middle Eastern cooking uses, and what goes into hummus. Unhulled sesame keeps the husk, which gives a darker paste with a firmer, more bitter edge.

Bayaz Tahin comes out light in colour and mild in taste, which is exactly what you want when you whip up a hummus. The recipes show what that means in practice.

Also good to know

Other questions

• There is oil on top of my tahini — is that normal?
• Storing tahini: where, how long and what to look out for
• Where do you buy stone-ground tahini?