Recipe for sesame chicken

Recipe for sesame chicken is delicious with all the tahini benefits.

Two and a half hours from start to finish is what it takes to make this recipe for sesame chicken. It's in the oven about half of that time when you will not be actively busy; but on the BBQ you do have to lay eggs for a while to ensure you do not end up with a towering-inferno.

So perhaps an hour's work in total to get the tender, moist and smokey sesame-chicken flavour.

This page was last updated on 9th January, 2024.

Introduction

Steps one and two are easy. Get the BBQ started. I like to do it with logs from the garden; it takes nearly an hour before the hot coals are ready. You may prefer brickettes. 

Meantime open the chickens from the wrapping. Remove the giblets and pop half a lemon and an onion into each carcass.

It takes exactly the same length of time to prepare this recipe for one sesame-chicken as for two birds.

Most of us love a BBQ so I don't look upon this as work; it is sheer pleasure and nothing from the fast-food joints can compare in flavour or nutrition.

Add your own favourite herbs and spices.

Recipe for sesame chicken

This recipe for sesame chicken is so easy on the barbecue. To turn it into one of our fast healthy dinners we'll have to use the pressure cooker too; that would reduce the time by two-thirds.

Step Three

Nuke them for about fifteen-minutes; half of that for one chicken, depending on the weight and how concerned you are about a little pink meat near the bone. She who must be obeyed is fussy so they get a little extra.

Ingredients

Step Four

Collect your favourite herbs and prepare a marinade that you will use to baste the chickens on the BBQ. I have used the following.

• olive oil (1/3 cup).
• honey (1TBSP).
• mint.
• coriander.
• garlic.
  
• a few mulberries that are in season, optional.
  
• Salt and black pepper.
  
• Half a lemon, pulp and all.
  

Step Five

Grind the sesame seeds. Use at least a tablespoon; more if you want a strong, robust flavour.

Add the ground-seeds to the marinade and stir it up. Sesame oil benefits tells that this is a lot more than about a delicious flavour.

Sesame seeds are rich in a lot of nutritious phytochemicals. The oil is very high in oleic acid, the same fat that makes the olive so good. That is the stuff that coats your nerves. Without its myelin sheath, there is no conduction; tingling in arms and hands will begin.

Perhaps you have heard of demyelinating diseases; eat more foods rich in oleic acid.

Lignans

They are also full of lignans; plant material that is strongly anti-inflammatory. They are perfect to go on your recipe for sesame chicken.

There is also interesting research that lignans are associated with less malignant breast-tumours; they have a structure very similar to, and inhibit circulating oestrogen^[1].

Add the freshly-ground sesame seeds to your marinade and mix thoroughly; the thicker the better.

Don't use whole sesame-seeds; they go straight through you, bringing no nutritional benefit; and may get stuck in any diverticuli.

Step Six

Remove the chickens from the microwave and check on the BBQ. Is it about ready? Take the chickens and marinade out to the fire.

Give a thought. Do you have anything else to go on the grill? I'm doing a Lebanese eggplant-dish today, so a raw whole aubergine.

• Foods to reduce inflammation ...
• Homocysteine cardiovascular ...

You may want to lay them on aluminium foil. A hard choice as it is suspected of being one of the causative factors in Alzheimer's disease. However, it is not impossible that the element is laid down after inflammation and plaque have already done their damage. Far more importantly researchers are now pointing to the happy tum, full of friendly bugs.

Rather like suspicion is pointing less towards cholesterol being the real villain of the peace. Generations back they lived on red meat and did not drop dead like flies like we are on today's Western diet.

Current thinking is that it's inflammation caused by homocysteine and a diet high in omega-6 polyunsaturated oils from the sunflower, corn and soybean that is causing the anger; and cholesterol is only laid down afterwards.

Foods to reduce inflammation is a vast subject; it may appear unthinkable but a cardiac surgeon is recommending we get back to butter.

But then overly-charred meat is also problematic; Hobson's choice.

I like to push the coals across to the far side of the grill, and place the chickens well away; but near the heat, so if there's a flare it will not turn into an inferno.

Step seven

After about thirty-minutes, once the chickens are browned all over, then start basting this recipe for sesame chicken with your marinade. Cut a few small slits down the thighs to hasten the cooking deep in the meat, pouring in ample quantities of your tahini mixture.

Keep turning the chickens, moving them closer to the heat as the coals start to die.

Now's the moment when you have a little time on your hand. You could sit still and look into the middle distance, contemplating the meaning of life! Or you might fetch your Kindle and download Bernard Preston's latest spicy novel; only 99c mind you.

Having edited A Family Affair 35 times, I will give it the miss; a minuscule compared to Jane Austin's 130 rewrites, all without a computer.

But then I do not expect anyone to be reading this thrilling, very different love affair in a hundred years' time; instead I will take a stroll around the Garden Cathedral, never too far from the BBQ.

The real owners of this bit of Eden where we live is a pair of Hadeda Ibis; they are peeved off with the usurper. I see the lime tree is flowering properly for the first time, the lettuce seedlings are up and a beautiful strelitzia; two different azaleas too and as I pass the apiary I'm wondering how much natural honey can I expect from 10 hives this spring?

Phytosterols

Mm, the eggplant looks ready, let me poke it. Good, it's soft right through; now for some delicious anti-cholesterol Baba Ghanoush to go with our recipe for sesame chicken and a fresh green salad. They are full of phytosterols, the folate and minerals needed to break down that toxic homocysteine.

Right, it's time to cut deep into the flesh of your young-cockerel to make sure that it is cooked right through. Keep basting your recipe for sesame chicken too if it looks like it might be drying out.

Copy and paste "Baba Ghanoush" and "what are phytosterols" into Site Search in the main menu above for more information.

Dishes like this sesame-chicken fit in well for those like us who have moved to a flexitarian diet; enjoying red meat only once or twice a week. Most of our protein comes from legumes but also fish and fowl.

How to make tahini

How to make tahini is to my mind only worth considering if you are unable to purchase the Greek or Turkish original for your recipe for sesame chicken; I've tried and reluctantly agreed they know something, learned over thousands of years that is not easily acquired.

Tahini is the basis of much Mediterranean cooking. It's a sesame-seed paste that is so easy to make in your own kitchen but not up to that made in Turkey and Macedonia.

Is the chicken not quite done? Then turn it into a spatch-cock for the last five minutes.

Meanwhile, hopefully the boss has been getting the salad ready. Early this morning, same as every day, I go to our delicious homemade Panera bread menu recipe, so grub's up!

Did you know that it takes only five minutes, with the help of a bread machine to bake your own fresh, nutritious sourdough. That spells the end of the bellyache from the commercial loaf; and a few more hours for the yeast and oven to do their thing.

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