North African Spice Blend - Cooking Mischief

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A simplified spice blend inspired by Maghrebi (North African) cuisine.

Originally Posted: Dec. 9, 2021

Total Time: Just a few minutes

Table of Contents

Intro

This blend originally comes from a salmon recipe in a paleo cookbook called Well Fed (which I highly recommend if you’re interested in easy, healthy meals).

After finding a very similar spice blend in a recipe for “Beijing-style Lamb Skewers” somewhere online, I began to pre-mix the spices in larger amounts to use later. I’ve since used it on steaks, pork tenderloin, chicken, brisket, and a variety of seafood.

Well Fed paleo cookbook — I bought this copy of Well Fed back in 2012, and it has served me well.

Smoked shrimp with North African spices — Smoked shrimp with the spice blend, melted butter, and lemon slices.

Brief History

North Africa (the Maghreb), the Middle East, and the length of the old Silk Road have a long history of using similar spice blends to flavor food. Spice blends that are nearly identical to modern za’atar or ras el hanout have been found in Egyptian tombs.

Ras el hanout (Maghrebi): Cumin, coriander, cardamom, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, allspice, ginger, chili peppers, peppercorn, paprika, fenugreek, turmeric.
Za’atar (Middle Eastern): Cumin, coriander, thyme, sesame seeds, sumac, salt, chili flakes.
Baharat (Middle Eastern): Cumin, coriander, allspice, black peppercorns, cardamom, cassia, cloves, nutmeg, turmeric, saffron, ginger, dried peppers or paprika.
Advieh (Iranian, Mesopotamian): Cumin, coriander, turmeric, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, rose petals or buds, ginger.
Hawaij (Yemeni): Cumin, coriander, black pepper, turmeric, cardamom.
Masalas (Indian): The many regional masalas (mixes) can include: Cumin, coriander, fennel, bay leaves, black & white peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon/cassia, mace, black & green cardamom pods, chili powder, mustard seeds, fenugreek.
Sichuan Spice Blend (China): Cumin, Sichuan peppercorns, Sichuan chili flakes, black peppercorns, salt, ginger, garlic powder, chili powder.

These spice blends all share a lot of the same ingredients and are used in similar situations regardless of region. The spice blend I’ve included below functions as a (very) simplified version of many of the above spice blends. In my cooking notes, I variously call it “North African Spice Blend” (due to the original salmon recipe) or “Moroccan Spice Blend” (I honestly can’t remember why I zeroed in specifically on Morocco here, but notes is notes).

Brisket with North African spice blend — I often put the spice blend on steaks, but I was feeling adventurous one day and tried it out on smoked brisket. It turned out amazing. You can see here that I labeled my spice shaker “Moroccan Spice Blend”.

Ingredients

I originally pulled this spice blend from the paleo cookbook Well Fed, specifically the recipe Salmon a l’Afrique du Nord on page 103. Over time, I started using it on almost everything.

North African spice paste for salmon — My family talked me into cooking it for them the day after Thanksgiving this year. Here’s the spice blend mixed with orange juice to form a paste, right before being spread on the salmon filets.

Moroccan Spice Blend 6 — I keep a list of the ingredients on Google Keep Notes so I have them with me at all times. I also list the original recipe amounts (in case I need to cook a batch) and the relative ratios (in case I’m shopping to make a larger amount of the blend).

Original Amounts from Salmon Recipe

In the original Well Fed recipe, the spices are mixed together and then an amount of orange juice is added to make a paste (I’ve found the I always need more orange juice than the book calls for, so I just eyeball it). Once the paste is made, it’s spread on the salmon, and then the fish is grilled skin-side down for a few minutes before being flipped and grilled paste-side down. The paste forms a delicious crust on the salmon. You can find my full written rendition of the North African Salmon recipe here, where I adjust some ingredient amounts because I usually cook this for a small crowd.

Note: Looking through the actual book in order to write this article, I realized that the recipe also calls for 1 Tbsp. of melted coconut oil, which I always forget about when I make this salmon. I bet that’s why I always add more orange juice than the recipe calls for to get a good paste consistency, but that also means that the recipe works just fine without the coconut oil.

The spice amounts in the recipe are per 2 lbs. of salmon. Also, when I calculated this out I converted some of the units to make the math easier (i.e., 1½ teaspoons = 0.5 tablespoons, because 1 tablespoon = 3 teaspoons).

½ tbsp. (7.5g) Cumin
½ tbsp. (7.5g) Coriander
½ tbsp. (7.5g) Dried Ginger
½ tbsp. (7.5g) Salt
½ teaspoon (2.5g) Paprika
0.25 teaspoon (1.25g) Cayenne Pepper

Note: Metric conversions came from this site.

Moroccan Spice Blend 1 — When I want to make a large amount of the spice blend by ratio, I just buy a bunch of shaker jars of the constituent spices. The jars should be roughly the same size, but you don’t need to measure perfectly with this method.

Amounts by Ratio

Once I started making larger amounts of this spice ahead of time, it made more sense to calculate the overall ratios of the ingredients in order to scale it up. When I want to make a batch, I’ll buy whole spice shaker jars and throw them all together in a mixing bowl to speed things up. I don’t bother measuring super accurately when I do this, so it only takes a couple of minutes.

1 part Cumin
1 part Coriander
1 part Ginger
1 part Salt
1/3 part Paprika
1/6 part Cayenne

Moroccan Spice Blend 3 — -mixed together.

When I buy whole shaker jars to do this, it looks like:

2 jars Cumin
2 jars Coriander
2 jars Ginger
2 jars Salt (I just pour Salt into the empty jars from the above spices to “measure” it)
2/3 jar Paprika (I spoon some Paprika into an empty jar until it looks like it’s about 2/3 full)
1/3 jar Cayenne (I spoon some Cayenne into an empty jar until it looks like it’s about 1/3 full)

Mix all the ingredients together in a big mixing bowl, then you can either fill all the empty spice shaker jars with it, or you can buy some larger plastic spice shakers like these ones.

Moroccan Spice Blend 4 — I bought a few multi-packs of these 32oz spice shakers to store this spice as well as others.

Moroccan Spice Blend 5 — I also filled a few of the empty shaker jars to give to friends and family.

Equipment

Mixing bowl (I really like this nesting stainless steel set)
Optional: Large plastic spice shaker (I think I bought a couple of 6-pack sets of these 32oz spice shakers to fill with various spice blends and barbecue rubs)