Have any of you ever tried to make Hummus from scratch before?
One of the ingredients its Tahini which is not easy to get here in Taiwan and it makes the hummus-making process a bit more expensive.
Can you replace tahini with 芝麻醬?, that is my question.
In my experience, some of the “sesame pastes/sauces” you find in the local supermarkets have some additional ingredients which causes the hummus to taste strange. However, the Santa Cruz chain of shops has an excellent 100% white sesame paste (uni-president) which I find works well for hummus.
Take this time to thank the gods of international commerce and the architects of the Silk Road.
Tahini has simply become interchangeable with sesame paste. Tahini can be seen as “more prepared” version with added olive oil and garlic. Sesame paste is just ground sesame seeds.
Yes, you can you sesame paste in place of it. Don’t cheap out on this. Get the stuff freshly ground. There are shops all around Taiwan that do that. If you are really clever you can make a souped up halva with black sesame seed paste! Oh, delish!
You can get Israeli tahini in Carrefour. I bought some a couple of weeks ago and made hummus with it. It says ‘with seasoning’ on the bottle, but I can’t taste anything except sesame. The hummus turned out great.
AFAIK tahini should not have anything at all in it except sesame. I’ve tried grinding up sesame seeds. It works, and it tastes … well, like tahini. You just need to make sure you get ‘raw’ sesame seeds, not ones that have been roasted or otherwise processed.
You can also buy tahini at Willie’s deli in tianmu.
Would this “Willies” be a kind of psuedo-replacement for Wellmans?
Does it count as a replacement if it’s also been there forever? Perhaps not as long as Wellman’s was, but over a decade for sure.
And yes, the stock is pretty similar to what Wellman’s used to have. Plus they make sandwiches.
I’ve been doing it with only olive oil and no tahini. But I’ll try it whenever I get my hands on 100% sesame paste.
Yes, I have seen tahini in Carrefour but my problem was on how more expensive than sesame paste it is. Hummus should not be expensive at all 
Hummus is hmm, actually a paste the way you want to make it, to your own taste, no rules, a million recipes. I made some wonderful hummus pastes over the years, all different, but still hummus. Sesame past is bitter, so watch out if you don’t want that, use it sparingly.
Cottonfields, the organic store, also has the real tahini.
