Sneak Peek into the Sesame Seed & its Manufacturing Process

Sesame seed, or sesamum, one of the nine major cultivated oilseeds across the globe, has been known for its culinary and medicinal properties for centuries. It has religious significance too. Because the seed is rich in fat, protein, carbohydrate, fibre and some minerals and has a mild and delicious aroma and taste, it lends itself as an ingredient in foods. It is also used extensively in traditional or ayurvedic medicines preparation.

These flat, oval shaped tiny seeds bear a crunchy and nutty texture and are used all over the world in food recipes and skin care products. With the scientific name sesamum indicum, these seeds are grown and manufactured in bulk quantities in India, Mexico, Africa and China etc. The seeds grow naturally in pods and are cultivated from edible seeds. They come in a lot of varieties and variants viz. natural white sesame seeds, hulled white sesame seeds, black sesame seeds, brown sesame seeds, all of which find use and application over the globe. There are many well-known sesame seeds manufacturers & exporters of sesame seeds or sesame oil in India and most of them follow the same sesame seeds manufacturing process to produce them in bulk. The following is a step by step description of the process of sesame seeds manufacturing:

The sesame seeds manufacturer needs big processing plants and the correct machinery in-house to appropriately process the sesame seeds. The processing is broadly carried out in three main steps which are cleaning, dehulling and sorting. Since there are two kinds of sesame seeds-hulled and unhulled, the unhulled seed lot does not need to go through the dehulling process. The sesame seeds manufacturer adopts the following steps for manufacturing & processing the sesame seeds:

Step 1: Cleaning

This is the pre-cleaning process which is meant to clean all the raw seeds and is done by removing all the impurities and dust particles.

There are many devices within the cleaning machinery to carry on this process.

Firstly, all the seeds are sieved then transferred to a spiral blending machine and then into the grader followed by the de-stoner.

The machine has three different discharging outlets for impurities, for sewage and for cleaned seeds.

Step 2: Dehulling

This process is of two different kinds-dry dehulling and wet dehulling. Dry dehulling uses the dry method to peel-off the hull of sesame seeds. At Wilmington Foods, we use dry hulling technology that massively saves water consumption and also enhances the food safety as contaminated water is the major souce of potential pathogens. Whereas wet dehulling is used where a large output needs to be obtained.

Wet dehulling in turn includes 5 processes which are: soaking, dehulling, separation, cleaning and drying.

Step 3: Sorting

The final step of the sesame seeds manufacturing process is sorting in which again is divided into 3 steps: fine sorting, magnetic sorting and colour sorting.

Fine sorting-this is a kind of a sorting process in which all the seeds are fined and then sorted on the size basis.

Magnetic sorting-this is a kind of a sorting process in which the fined seeds are made to go through magnetic field or charge to remove all kinds of magnetic impurities.

Colour sorting-in this sorting, the single sorter machine separates impurities like foreign particles and stones.

Concluding the aforesaid steps of sesame seeds manufacturing, the sesame seeds manufacturer bags the dehulled seeds and get them ready for export. The Dehulled sesame is generally used to incorporate texture, taste and even aesthetic value to a variety of bakery products such as bread, bread sticks, cookies, bars and so on. It is also an additive in cereal mixes and crackers. Halawa (a sweet confectionary) and tahini (sesame butter) are two popular foods especially in the West Asia region.