Harissa Paste | Moroccan-Tunisian Spice Blend
My first encounter with Harissa was at a colleague’s place in Germany. Believe me, once you’ve tried this you will forget the Srirachas and ketchups and other chilli sauces.
Harissa is a Chilli paste/sauce from Tunisia and used widely in Tunisian and Moroccan cuisines. You can use it to flavour your dishes or even use it as is as a dip. In fact, that’s how the locals generally enjoy it; as a dip with Pita bread.
This is a very simple paste to put together and once you’ve had a taste of this homemade goodness, you will never go for the store bought version.
The general flavour profile is spicy and pungent but one can always flavour this with optional ingredients like lime juice, vinegar, tomato paste and smoked paprika. Also the level of spice depends on the type of chillies used. This gives you the freedom to experiment and have different flavour profiles of Harissa.
We Mangaloreans love our “Meet-Mirsaang” and this Harissa paste can be termed as the African cousin of it. You can use absolutely any dried chillies for this recipe and that decides the heat profile of this paste. Feel free to even increase/ decrease the amount of chillies used or even de-seed them.
I decided to give this, a Mangalorean twist by using our Kumti Mirsaang along with a few Ramnad. Do give it a try. Store this in a clean air-tight container. Top it with olive oil and refrigerate it upto a month. This can even be frozen upto a period of two months.
I personally use this paste to marinate seafood, chicken and even to flavour salads, veggie preparations and even scrambled eggs. Feel free to experiment with this paste. Enjoy!
Harissa Paste
Ingredients
- 15 Dry red chillies, Long, (I used Kumti)
- 5 Dry red chillies, Short, (I used Ramnad)
- 1 tbsp Coriander seeds
- 1 tbsp Cumin seeds
- 1 tsp Carraway seeds (optional) (see notes)
- 5 Garlic cloves (chopped)
- 1 tsp Salt
- ¼ cup Olive oil
Optional additions:
- 2 tbsp Smoked Paprika (see notes)
- 2 tbsp Lime juice
- 1 tbsp Vinegar (see notes)
- 1½ tbsp Tomato paste
Instructions
- Soak the Dry red chillies in boiling water and rehydrate them for about 30 mins
- Parallely toast the coriander seeds and cumin seeds over medium heat until you get a nice aroma. Take them off the flame and let them cool
- Take all the ingredients (including your optionals) except olive oil and grind them till you get a smooth paste. Reserve the water you used to rehydrate the chillies
- Next add the olive oil little by little and blend it together well in the mixie
- Harissa has a spicy pungent paste. Adjust the taste by adding more of the ingredients if needed, until you arrive at your preference. Add some of the reserved water if you want a thinner consistency.
- Take this paste out into a clean air tight container. Top it with Olive oil. It keeps well refrigerated for upto a month or upto 2 months when frozen in a freezer safe container
- Use this paste as a marinade, dip or to spice up your stews and curries
Notes
- If you do not want it too spicy, de-seed some of the chillies or all of them or even reduce the number of chillies
- Carraway seeds are used in authentic Harissa preparations. But you can skip it and use cumin powder instead or increase the quantity of cumin
- Smoked paprika is used to get the smoky flavour, but you can skip it if you don’t have access to it.
- Add some Kashmiri chilli powder if your chillies do not give out a rich red colour
- Frozen Harissa paste can be used as is for warm preparations like curries but will have to be thawed for cold preparations like dips.
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Along with the Harissa Paste, do try my other spice-blends too
