What Harissa Paste Is, and How the Styles Differ

By Jodie Smith, Product & Hamper Manager at The Gourmet Pantry.

Harissa is a North African chilli paste: red chilli, garlic, salt and oil ground coarse, with a spice blend behind it. It is a cooking paste rather than a hot sauce, the heat is moderate rather than fierce, and the style named on the label matters more than the brand. Rose, green and smoked chilli are three different ingredients, not three flavours of the same one.

What harissa paste is made of

The base is red chilli, garlic, salt and oil, ground to a coarse paste. After that every producer goes their own way with the spice blend. Cumin, coriander seed and caraway are the usual three, and the better jars add something that is not heat at all: dried rose petals, preserved lemon, pomegranate, smoked chipotle. That second layer is the difference between a paste that only burns and one you can build a meal on.

Harissa comes out of Tunisia, where it sits on the table the way tomato sauce does here, and it has spread across North Africa and the Middle East. The heat is usually moderate. A good one tastes of toasted spice and sweet cooked chilli first, with the burn arriving a second later. We taste everything we range, and that slow, late heat is what we look for before a jar joins our gourmet condiments shelf.

Harissa is not a hot sauce

This is where most jars go wrong at home. Harissa is a thick, salty cooking paste, closer to a curry paste or a spice rub than to sriracha or sambal. It is not designed to be squeezed over a finished plate in any quantity, and a tablespoon straight from the jar will taste harsh and raw. Sriracha is sweet and vinegary and pourable. Sambal is mostly straight chilli heat. Gochujang is fermented and sweet. Harissa is spice-led, and it wants heat, fat or dairy to open it up.

The practical version: if the label says paste, cook with it or slacken it before it hits the plate. If the label says harissa sauce, it has already been loosened with tomato or oil and can go straight onto pasta or a tray of vegetables.

Rose, green or smoked: which harissa is which

Harissa is not one flavour. These five styles cover most of what you will find in Australia, and they are not interchangeable.

If you are cooking for people who are wary of chilli, start with a rose harissa. The petals and the spice blend round off the edge, which is part of why the Belazu version has been a cupboard staple in the UK for more than twenty years.

One more thing worth knowing before you buy. Read the order of the ingredients. Chilli, capsicum or tomato near the top means the paste leads with fruit and body, and a spoonful will carry a whole dish. Oil or water near the top usually means a thinner, hotter paste that behaves more like a chilli condiment than a cooking base.

How harissa behaves in heat

Harissa changes character depending on when it meets the pan, and understanding that is most of what separates a jar that gets used from a jar that sits in the fridge door.

Heated in oil it deepens. A tablespoon of olive oil, the paste stirred in for 20 to 30 seconds until it darkens and the kitchen smells of cumin, and the spices give up far more than raw paste does. It is also how you rescue a jar that tastes flat, and the step to take before onions, rice or chickpeas go in.

Slackened into something cold it turns into a sauce. Harissa is thick and salty, so it needs a carrier: yoghurt, olive oil, lemon juice, mayonnaise, honey, tahini or the juices from a roast. One tablespoon in 250g of plain yoghurt is a dip, a marinade and a sauce for lamb at the same time.

Left raw it keeps its top notes. Cooking drives off the sharp, aromatic edge, so a teaspoon spooned over a finished plate tastes quite different from the same teaspoon simmered for an hour. Green harissa in particular is better raw than cooked.

Long cooking suits the red and smoked styles. Green harissa is happier added at the end.

How much harissa paste to use

Harissa is stronger than it looks and it keeps developing in the pan, so under-dose and correct at the end. Reliable starting points:

• As a seasoning: 1 teaspoon per person.
• Marinade for meat: 2 tablespoons per 500g, plus a tablespoon of oil, at least an hour ahead.
• Roast vegetables: 1 tablespoon per tray, tossed through the oil before it goes into a 200°C oven.
• Yoghurt dip or sauce: 1 tablespoon per 250g of yoghurt, with salt and a squeeze of lemon.
• Stews, soups and a 400g tin of tomatoes: 1 heaped tablespoon, bloomed in oil first.
• Pasta for four: 2 tablespoons, slackened with a ladle of pasta water.

Heat builds while a dish sits, so a stew made in the morning will be hotter by dinner. If you overshoot, yoghurt, a spoonful of honey or something starchy (potato, couscous, bread) pulls it back.

What harissa goes with

The short answer is fat, sweetness and starch. Harissa needs something to hold on to.

• Lamb above all: shoulder, cutlets, meatballs, sausages.
• Chicken thighs, roasted hard so the paste catches on the skin.
• Eggs: shakshuka, scrambled, or a fried egg on toast.
• Sweet root vegetables: carrots, pumpkin, sweet potato, beetroot.
• Pulses and grains: chickpeas, white beans, lentils, couscous, freekeh.
• Dairy: yoghurt, labneh, feta, halloumi, melted cheese in a toastie.
• Firm fish and prawns, with green harissa and plenty of lemon.
• Tomatoes, fresh or tinned, which is why harissa belongs in pasta.

It fights with delicate food: cream sauces, mild white fish, anything you want to taste of itself.

For the cooking rather than the theory, we have written up each jar on its own. Start with five ways with Ottolenghi green harissa or the rose, pomegranate and preserved lemon harissa, and see it in a finished dish in the pomegranate and lemon harissa sticky sausages and the green harissa stove-top frittata.

Which style suits which cook

Four jars, four different jobs. They sit in the same rough price band, so the choice is about what you cook rather than what you spend.

• Ottolenghi rose harissa with pomegranate and preserved lemon is the brightest of the four and the easiest first jar. The preserved lemon does the job of a squeeze of citrus, so chicken and pasta lift without any extra work.
• Green harissa is the one for fish, eggs and anything served raw. Fermented green chilli gives it a sourness the red pastes do not have.
• Smoked chilli harissa is rose harissa with chipotle and balsamic behind it. Best on roast vegetables, beans and anything off the barbecue.
• Belazu rose harissa paste is the classic all-rounder, good on everything from a lamb shoulder to a spoonful of mayonnaise. It comes and goes through the year, and the Ottolenghi rose harissa above is the closest stand-in while it is away.

A gentler way in, if a jar of paste feels like a commitment: the chilli harissa pesto is a tomato pesto carrying the same spice, ready for pasta straight from the jar.

Keeping an open jar

Refrigerate it once open and it will hold its flavour for about six weeks. Smooth the surface and keep a thin film of olive oil over the top, and always use a clean dry spoon, since water in the jar is what turns it dull. A layer of oil separating out on top is normal, so stir it back through. If you will not finish it, freeze spoonfuls in an ice cube tray, bag the cubes and drop one straight into a hot pan.

Harissa questions we get asked

What is harissa paste made of?

Red chilli, garlic, salt and oil ground into a coarse paste, plus a spice blend that usually includes cumin, coriander seed and caraway. From there it varies. Rose harissa adds dried rose petals, green harissa is built on jalapeño and fermented green chilli instead of red, and smoked versions use chipotle. Most jars sold here are a cooking paste rather than a table condiment.

Is harissa very hot?

Usually less hot than people expect. A good jar leads with toasted spice and sweet cooked chilli, and the burn arrives a second later and then fades. It is warm rather than fierce, closer to a mild curry paste than to a chilli sauce, and rose harissa is the mildest of the common styles because the petals and warm spices round the edge off.

How much harissa paste should I use?

One teaspoon per person is the safe starting dose. Two tablespoons marinates 500g of meat, one tablespoon seasons a tray of roast vegetables or 250g of yoghurt, and a heaped tablespoon suits a stew or a 400g tin of tomatoes. Add it early for depth, taste at the end, then add a little more raw if the dish needs lifting.

What is the difference between rose harissa and green harissa?

Rose harissa is red, built on red chilli with dried rose petals and warm spices. The heat is slow and the flavour is deep, which suits long cooking, red meat and tomato. Green harissa is built on jalapeño, green pepper and fermented green chilli, so it is sharper, fresher and a little sour. It is better spooned over finished food than simmered.

Is harissa the same as a hot sauce?

No. Hot sauces are thin, pourable and usually built on vinegar, and they go on at the table. Harissa is a thick, salty paste built on chilli, garlic and spice, and it goes in during cooking or gets slackened with yoghurt or oil first. Jars labelled harissa sauce are the exception, since they have already been loosened with tomato or oil.

Where to start

Harissa earns its shelf space because one jar does the work of a marinade, a spice mix and a sauce. Pick the style that matches the way you cook, keep it in the fridge, and reach for it on the nights you cannot face building flavour from scratch. All of them sit in our range of gourmet condiments, alongside the tagine pastes, preserved lemons and pomegranate molasses that go with them, and shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100.