Ask Ottolenghi: how do you make your own ras el hanout?

Ask Ottolenghi: how do you make your own ras el hanout?

Recipes for this aromatic spice mix vary wildly, but here’s how to blend your own to use in so many different ways

Do you have a good recipe for ras el hanout? It’s quite expensive to buy, but we may already have all the spices in the cupboard.
Ras el hanout is a brilliant Arabic spice mix. I always add some to any meat patty or kofta mix, and it’s also lovely stirred into oil or butter and rubbed all over a chicken before it’s roasted; traybakes also love a sprinkle of ras el hanout before going into the oven, be that with chickpeas, cauliflower, cubed butternut squash and so on.

The name roughly translates to “head of the shop” or “top shelf”, so in other words it’s traditionally made with whatever spices the shop or blender considers their best. As a result, recipes vary wildly, though most include some or all of black pepper, cardamom, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, ginger, turmeric and nutmeg. There are also regional variations to bear in mind: in Tunisia, say, it tends to be milder and include dried rose petals, whereas Moroccan ras el hanout has more of a kick.

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