These 13 tahini recipes are healthy and delicious ways to enjoy the popular sesame paste, from Buddha bowls to sweet potato fries to cookies!
Do you use tahini? You might have bought a jar of tahini if you’ve ever made homemade hummus. But tahini is not just for hummus! Common in Middle Easter or Mediterranean dishes, this sesame paste is becoming very popular: it’s used for dressings, dipping sauces, and even desserts! Tahini is one of Alex and my favorite ingredients to use in recipes, and we realized we have a long list of tahini recipes. Keep reading for 13 tahini recipes that make healthy eating undeniably delicious.
First, what is tahini sauce?What is tahini sauce (tahini)? Tahini is a paste made of sesame seeds, typically used in Middle Eastern or Mediterranean dishes. Tahini is vegan, vegetarian, gluten free, Paleo, keto, and Whole 30 friendly, so it works for many diets. It’s purely sesame seeds and salt! Tahini is perfect for making creamy sauces for salads and Buddha bowls, and it’s also fantastic for desserts like cookies or as a replacement for peanut butter for peanut allergies. It’s perfect for use in vegan dishes as a creamy alternative to dairy.
What does tahini taste like?On its own, tahini has a bitter flavor. It’s not sweet like most nut butters or seed butters! So, tahini is best when mixed with other flavors, especially an acid like lemon juice which brightens it. If using tahini in a dessert, it works well mixed with a sweetener like maple syrup. Ready for our tahini recipes?
Best Lemon Tahini Sauce
Our top tahini recipe is easily this Best Lemon Tahini Sauce! It’s a creamy, savory sauce that’s totally versatile: use it on salads, nourish bowls, tacos, fries, veggie burgers, and sandwiches. Since it’s vegan, it adds a creamy savoriness without the use of dairy. This one is so good we’ve used it on several different recipes: our Chickpea Couscous Bowls, Raw Falafel Buddha Bowls, and Roasted Nourish Bowls (not pictured).
Dark Chocolate Tahini No Bake Cookies
These vegan no bake cookies use tahini instead of the typical peanut butter, and they’re over the top delicious. Created for our friend with a peanut allergy, we made these no bake cookies with tahini instead of peanut butter, coconut oil instead of butter, and maple syrup instead of sugar. Using dark cocoa powder brings in a dark chocolate flavor, and a sprinkle of sea salt on top makes them salty sweet. These no bakes are a must make!
Moroccan Sweet Potatoes with Lemon Tahini Dressing
This tahini recipe is from a vegan cookbook, Power Plates by our friend Gena Hamshaw. It’s a hearty vegan main dish: roasted sweet potatoes are topped with Moroccan-spiced lentils and nourishing veggies. To take it over the top, a lemon tahini drizzle that’s similar to our Best Lemon Tahini Sauce above. It’s so flavorful, you won’t miss the meat or dairy in the slightest.
Cauliflower Shawarma Pita
This simple pita sandwich features one of our favorite veggies: roasted cauliflower! It’s nestled in a pita with crunchy romaine and drizzled with a yogurt tahini sauce that brings the entire sandwich together. This one’s from Kristin Donnelly’s book, Cauliflower.
Chickpea Couscous Bowls with Tahini Sauce
Want our favorite way to use that Best Lemon Tahini Sauce? It’s these couscous bowls! Couscous cooks up in just 5 minutes, so it’s a quick base for this bowl meal. To accessorize, cumin scented chickpeas, tomato and cucumber, and a bed of greens. Slather on that tangy, creamy tahini sauce, and it’s a heavenly vegan main dish in just 30 minutes. It’s one of our top recipe picks!
Five Ingredient Classic Homemade Hummus
A list of tahini recipes wouldn’t be complete without hummus! The most well-known way to use tahini is for making hummus; the sesame paste adds a creaminess and body that’s essential to homemade hummus. While we have many variations on hummus flavors, our best hummus recipe is this one: 5 ingredients make that classic, creamy hummus that’s endlessly versatile.
Fudgy Flourless Brownie Pie
This brownie pie isn’t technically a tahini recipe, until you consider the drizzle. Yes, that’s a salted tahini maple sauce, and it’s insanely good. From Jerrelle Guy’s cookbook Black Girl Baking, the sauce becomes almost caramely after mixing tahini, maple syrup, espresso powder, and salt. Here it’s drizzled over brownie pie, but it would be great on just about anything: vanilla ice cream, a skillet cookie, or vegan brownies. Healthy might be a stretch here on this pie recipe, so let’s just consider the tahini drizzle!
Raw Falafel Buddha Bowls
Here’s another tahini recipe that uses our Best Lemon Tahini Sauce, and this one is a tried and true favorite. Based on a dish from a fantastic vegan restaurant here in Indianapolis, Ezra’s Enlightened Cafe, this Buddha bowl features a raw version of falafel. Falafel are a popular Mediterranean chickpea fritter that are typically served in a pita: here, the falafel is deconstructed into raw vegan energy balls full of Mediterranean spices. It might sound strange, but the concept is seriously satisfying. Garnish with that Lemon Tahini Sauce and you have a bowl bursting with nutrients and flavor.
Mexican Loaded Sweet Potato Fries
Tahini recipes aren’t just salad bowls: in this recipe we’ve used tahini to make a Cumin Lime Crema sauce without the dairy! This vegan crema sauce relies on tahini, lime juice, Mexican hot sauce, and cumin to bring big flavor. The sauce brings together our crispy sweet potato fries and Mexican style toppings (black beans, salsa, corn). You could serve it as an appetizer, but we prefer this as a vegan dinner recipe: so we can have it all to ourselves!
Baked Falafel Salad Bowl
Falafel, those fried Mediterranean chickpea fritters, are in our hall of fame of favorite food. And they’re traditionally served with a tahini sauce, which makes them a natural fit for this list of tahini recipes. Instead of deconstructed like in the Raw Falafel recipe above, here the falafel are baked in a patty shaped and nestled into a bowl of fresh veggies. It’s served with a Creamy Cilantro Dressing made with yogurt and tahini (for vegan, use that Best Lemon Tahini Sauce instead).
“Get Your Greens” Naan Pizzas
This tahini recipe is a vegan version of pizza so flavorful you don’t miss the cheese! Naan pizzas are fitting for weeknights, so you don’t have to bother with making and shaping pizza dough. Instead, simply spread toppings onto purchased naan bread or pitas and bake. These naan pizzas are spread with hummus and topped with broccoli, chard and artichokes. And the best part: a flavor-popping drizzle made of tahini, miso, and orange juice.
Baked Tofu Tacos with Chipotle Tahini Sauce
Back to Mexican-style flavors with this tahini recipe: tacos! Here we’ve baked tofu with a zesty marinade, then topped them with crunchy fresh veggies. What brings it all together is a chipotle tahini sauce that’s perfect for tacos of any kind. The magic ingredient is adobo sauce from a can of chipotle peppers; it’s readily available in most groceries and adds a smoky flavor and bright orange color.
Go Green Bowls with Lemon Yogurt Sauce
For our last tahini recipe, tahini teams up with yogurt to make an ultra savory creamy sauce! To up the savory saltiness, we’ve used capers to blend into the dressing to balance the tangy lemon. The tahini yogurt sauce is perfect for salads and Buddha bowls, or as a dip for roasted veggies (like those sweet potato fries above). Here, we’ve created a custom “Go Green” bowl with quinoa, broccoli and greens to make eating your greens intensely satisfying and delicious.
More tahini recipesFor more tahini recipes, here are a few from around the web:
36 Tahini Recipes | Bon AppetitTahini Sheet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting | Molly YehHasselback Potatoes with Tahini Sauce | The Lemon BowlA Couple Cooks - Recipes for Healthy & Whole Living
Easy to make salted caramel millionaire bars with a shortbread cookie base, salted tahini caramel filling and topped with dairy free chocolate. Both vegan, gluten free and paleo! This recipe is in partnership with Enjoy Life. I’m just getting home from a beautiful trip to New Mexico to visit my Mom and Grandma. Per usual, [...]
The post Salted Tahini Caramel Millionaire Bars (vegan + paleo) appeared first on Ambitious Kitchen.
When visiting Mexico City recently, we ate so much delicious food that my brain was bursting with ideas by the time we got home.
One of my main goals was to perfect a (vegan) chicken broth-like tortilla soup with vegetables and jackfruit. I suppose you see where this is going? Let’s make soup, friends.
This recipe requires just 10 ingredients and 1 pot to make.
1-Pot Vegan Tortilla Soup from Minimalist Baker →
Learn how to roast acorn squash for an easy Fall side dish. This simple and easy roasted acorn squash is sweet but without any refined sugars and made with just 3 ingredients.
I will forever be unable to separate this recipe from a moment in time about seven years ago when Dustin’s father, Rollie, had suddenly become very ill.
While I waited with Dustin and his family at his grandparents’ home in Arkansas to learn more about his condition, everyone sat around the living room and told stories of Rollie.
We all laughed and cried. And laughed some more. Rollie would have loved seeing everyone, but I know he would have been so annoyed that all this fuss was about him.
Though many aspects of our lives had been put on hold at that time, as we tried to adjust to Rollie’s sudden illness and hospitalization, one constant remained: We all needed to eat.
In an effort to help, I made this recipe for everyone one night.
At least I could share some good food with everyone during this hard time.
Simple things.
I first learned how to make roasted acorn squash from my mom, who would make roasted acorn squash often during the Fall by just roasting it with some brown sugar sprinkled over the top. I remember loving it as a kid.
Nowadays, I substitute brown sugar for coconut sugar to make the roasted acorn squash healthy.
So sweet. Literally and metaphorically.
Fun fact about acorn squash – acorn squash is a winter squash. However, it belongs to the same family as pumpkin and butternut squash – the summer squash family. It just needs a little more time in the sun. I like to enjoy it during Fall. Or during winter in the form of a delicious acorn squash soup. But more about that later. For now, let’s focus our attention on learning how to prepare acorn squash and how to roast acorn squash.
HOW TO ROAST ACORN SQUASHYou won’t believe how easy it is to make roasted acorn squash. I just love the sweetness you get from roasting acorn squash. I mean… it’s hard to go wrong with tossing some coconut sugar on it. It’s like acorn squash and candy had a baby. For realz.
Just follow these easy steps and you’ll be on your way to perfect roasted acorn squash goodness:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper and set aside. Slice the acorn squash in half through the stem and remove the seeds. Lay flat, cut-side-down, and slice into 1 inch – 1 1/2 inch slices starting at the stem. Lay the acorn squash slices out evenly on the baking sheet. Sprinkle with the coconut sugar and sea salt (if you’d like). Roast. How long to bake acorn squash for? I’d say 40-50 minutes or until the squash is tender and a fork pierces the flesh easily.Poof: You just learned how to roast acorn squash. Congratulations!
So… that’s it?
Nope! Of course not. Teaching you how to roast acorn squash was on my list but so is making sure your baked acorn squash is perfect and delicious. So teaching you how to bake acorn squash was just the first step of the process.
Next step, how to tell if acorn squash is ripe.
Luckily, there are some very easy ways to tell if an acorn squash is at it’s best when you’re at the grocery store.
Choose an acorn squash that is heavy for its size Look for smooth, dull skin and no soft spots The acorn squash should have a good balance between green and orange coloring (too much orange means the flesh will be stringy due to being over-ripe and too much green means it hasn’t fully matured) If possible, try to avoid any acorn squash that has shiny skin since that likely means it was picked before it was mature.
The 3rd step involves learning how to cut acorn squash.
Cutting through and opening up an acorn squash is a little tricky if you’ve never tried it before. I can still remember watching my mom hit the end of her chef knife with a mallet over and over again trying to pry it through the hard exterior of the acorn squash. Here are some tips to make it as easy as possible for you:
Use a sharp, sturdy knife to cut acorn squash. Pick one of the valleys in between the ridges on the outside of the squash, which go from the top to the bottom of the squash. Making this first cut will take some strength and force. Reposition your knife and use that initial cut as your entry point for slicing all the way through. Make the first cut on one side of the stem, cutting straight down until you feel the knife break through the exterior and into the hollow center. If you’re nervous about your hand slipping, you can try using a towel. Continue cutting the squash around the tip, repositioning the knife along the way if it feels like your knife is stuck. Remember to keep your fingers tucked in and out of the way of the knife. Once you’ve cut all the way around the squash and are back at the stem, pick up the acorn squash and pull it apart with your hands, not with the knife. Don’t worry about cutting off the stem – it can be roasted with it on. Scrape out the seeds using a spoon. If you’re not filling your acorn squash with some sort of stuffing, lay the squash down, flat-side down, and slice into 1-2 inch slices for roasting. ACORN SQUASH NUTRITIONBefore moving to the next step, let’s take a short break and talk about acorn squash nutrition, shall we? You know I gotta add in why it’s so nutritious for ya!
Raw Acorn Squash Nutrition Facts (1/2 cup)
40 calories Total Fat 0.1 g Sodium 3 mg Potassium 347 mg Carbs 10 g Fiber 1.5 g Protein 0.8 g Vitamins – vitamin A, Vitamin B6, vitamin B12, vitamin C, vitamin D Minerals – calcium, iron, and magnesium.This was me trying to tell you that this is a healthy acorn squash recipe. In case you were wondering.
Back to our steps now. We’re at step no. 4, which means learning how to cook acorn squash.
You can, of course, use my recipe to make a perfectly roasted acorn squash. But the acorn squash possibilities are endless so I have to discuss what to do with acorn squash besides roasting it.
Let’s start with the basics, meaning different cooking acorn squash techniques.
Savory baked acorn squash – similar to my roasted acorn squash recipe. But instead of coconut sugar or raw honey, you use a savory rub made with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Microwaved acorn squash – the lazy version for roasting acorn squash. All you have to do for getting your acorn squash ready for the microwave is to cut it in half and place it side down on a dish. Microwave for approximately 10 minutes. Turn the acorn squash side up. Fill the center with coconut sugar and raw honey, cover the top and microwave for another 2 or 3 minutes. Whipped acorn squash or boiled acorn squash – Put the acorn squash cut into cubes into a large pot of water. Bring the water to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for another 15 minutes. Drain, place the acorn squash on a cutting board and remove the skin. Return to the pot and add coconut sugar and your favorite spices (nutmeg is a good idea). Mash the acorn squash with a fork until smooth.What else to do with acorn squash? Let’s see. You can:
Roast it and add it to a salad; Make acorn squash puree and add it to oatmeal; Use it in a pie. You can use a pumpkin pie recipe and substitute pumpkin for acorn squash. CAN YOU EAT ACORN SQUASH SKIN?The 5th step is how to eat acorn squash but I don’t have too many things to say about that. You cook it and you eat it. Pretty straightforward I’d say. Instead, I’ll let you know if you can eat acorn squash skin.
If you’re wondering if you can eat acorn squash skin, the answer is yes, you sure can! In fact, it’s a delicious part of the squash. The trick is that you need to roast it until it’s tender or it will be too tough to eat. However, once roasted and tender, acorn squash skin is totally edible and yummy so no need to peel!
Last step then we’re going to discuss other squash recipes (acorn squash recipes included!), ok? Time for learning how to freeze acorn squash.
Remove the acorn squash skin; Cut the acorn squash in half; Remove all the seeds and pulp; Cut the acorn squash into small cubes. Arrange the cubes in a single layer on a baking sheet. Place into the freezer until the acorn squash cubes are completely frozen. Transfer the cubes to a Ziploc bag or a freezer-safe container.Acorn squash can be stored in the freezer for up to 10 months!
3 MORE HEALTHY SQUASH RECIPESAfter this healthy acorn squash recipe, I’m pretty sure you want more acorn squash recipes or squash recipes. And I have them! Squash recipes are the best. Especially during Fall and Winter when amazing flavors and comforting food is all you can think of – ok, maybe that’s just me but you get the idea.
ROASTED ACORN SQUASH SOUPAnother simple and healthy acorn squash recipe I want to share with you is this Roasted Acorn Squash Soup recipe.
This amazingly easy and delicious Roasted Acorn Squash Soup is another great way to enjoy those tasty acorn squashes this Fall! Get the recipe.
HOW TO COOK SPAGHETTI SQUASHSpaghetti Squash is amongst my favorite squash recipes. Learn How to Cook Spaghetti Squash and enjoy all our favorite pasta dishes once again.
Spaghetti squash is a low carb, gluten-free, and, most importantly, tasty pasta substitute you can prep in just 5 minutes. Get the recipe.
BUTTERNUT SQUASH BISQUELast on this list of squash recipes is this Butternut Squash Bisque. Easy and delicious. Plus paleo-friendly, gluten-free, and easy to convert to vegan.
This soup gives you amazing Fall and Winter flavors + comfort + an amazing cozy dinner. Amazeballs! Get the recipe.
Learn how to roast acorn squash for an easy Fall side dish. This simple and easy roasted acorn squash is sweet but without any refined sugars and made with just 2 ingredients.
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper and set aside. Slice the acorn squash in half through the stem and remove the seeds.Lay the flat, cut-side-down on a cutting board, and slice into 1 inch – 1 1/2 inch slices, starting at the stem.
Lay the acorn squash slices out evenly on the prepared baking sheet.Sprinkle with the coconut sugar and (optional) sea salt.
Roast for 40-50 minutes, until the squash is tender and a fork pierces the flesh easily. (Remember, you can eat the skin!)
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