Tunisian Tabil Spice

Tabil is a traditional North African spice blend used widely in Tunisian and Algerian cooking. It is a simple, aromatic mix, warm and earthy with a mild heat and a slight sweetness, and it smells of coriander and caraway before anything else.

It is built around coriander, caraway, garlic, anise and a touch of cayenne. Coriander brings citrusy notes, caraway an earthy warmth, garlic a savoury base and anise a subtle sweetness, with the cayenne giving just enough heat to register.

How to use it

Tabil is commonly used to season meats such as chicken, lamb and merguez sausage, and it also works in soups, stews, roasted vegetables and marinades. Around a tablespoon seasons a stew for four. The technique tip: bloom it in olive oil with the onions at the start of a dish rather than sprinkling it in later. Caraway and anise are seed spices whose oils need fat and heat to open up, and thirty seconds in the pan turns the raw, dusty smell into something rounded and nutty.

Details

Also known as

تابل, Tunisian Tabil, Algerian Tabil