In Chinese cooking, sesame oil(the one that comes in smaller bottles, with a
goldeny dark brown colour & tastes very nutty & fragrant) is used mainly
towards or at the end of the cooking process to add 'flavour'. Sometimes it
can be added into a marinade to season food before cooking. We never treat
or use it like cooking/deep frying oil because it burns very easily under
high heat, leaving a very bitter taste & it's too expensive to use in large
amounts. Note: this darker sesame oil is basically a 'concentrated' fragrant
oil derived from roasting & pressing/extracting the natural oils from top
grade sesame seeds. It's quite a tedious process & often using lots of
expensive top grade sesame seeds just to produce this very fragrant oil.
Someone who works in the suace 'business' gave me a figure of 1 ton - 1
gallon of finished oil. Now that's a lot of seeds for a gallon of fragrant
sesame oil!! Next time you use it, think about it & use it sparingly...
that's how we Chinese use it. Old Chinese folk will also say that consuming
too much of this concentrated fragrant sesame oil will be very 'heaty' to
the body.

There are basically 2 types/kinds of sesame seeds. White & Black. Both white
& black seeds are used in producing oil. The raw white seeds are pressed to
obtain a light coloured oil which is mainly used to make other cooking
oils(mixed or veg. cooking oils etc.) or even margarine. To make the
fragrant dark oil, sesame seeds (which can be both white or black seeds) are
first cleaned of grit & dirt then roasted & stirred constantly to prevent
burning, which imparts a bitter taste & makes bad fragrant oil. After the
seeds have been roasted, they are allowd to cool before milling & pressing
to obtain the 'basic' fragrant oil. From here, each sesame oil producer may
add or adjust the flavour at his/her discretion. Better read the label on
the bottle. Hence some people swear on buying certain brands only or looking
out for the made with 100% pure sesame oil only etc. Good brands use top
quality sesame seeds to produce the fragrant nutty oils.

And now to answer your question, No, do not substitute light coloured sesame
oil for the dark fragrant one. When Chinese recipe asks for sesame oil, it's
the dark coloured fragrant oil that we use.

DC.




Dee Randall <deedoveyatshenteldotnet> wrote in message
...
> I buy sesame oil in large cans (52 oz. imported by Rhee Bros.) that I use
> for adding to my skillet/wok for frying.
>
> However, sometimes a recipe will call for a teaspoon of sesame oil to be
> added at the end of a recipe. I always feel like they are referring to
the
> sesame oil that comes from a teeny-tiny bottle (and expensive) that
appears
> to be darker and thicker.
>
> I used to keep this darker and thicker smaller bottle in my refrigerator
and
> use, but it is really powerful-tasting stuff.
>
> Would one substitute this sesame oil that comes in the larger cans for the
> sesame oil that comes in the small bottle.
>
> thanks,
> Dee
>
>