9 Spices Middle Easterners Use for Spicy Food Cooking

If you’re trying to cook hot Middle Eastern food without making it taste western, you’ll need to get the right spices. And by right spices, I mean the ones used by Middle Easterners who like hot and spicy food. Fortunately, they are available in almost all grocery stores in the Middle East and hypermarkets in North America.

Here are the most common spices Middle Easterners use for spicy food cooking:

1. Aleppo Pepper – Spiciness 8/10 
2. Paprika – Spiciness 7/10
3. Allspice – Spiciness 6/10
4. Black pepper – Spiciness 7/10
5. Sumac – Spiciness 5/10
6. Turmeric – Spiciness 4/10
7. Cumin – Spiciness 5/10

But don’t leave yet! We talk about 2 more Middle Eastern spices that don’t rank highly on the “spicy scale”, but they can increase spiciness if you prepare them a certain way. So keep reading to learn more about the flavor profile and the role of different spices used in Middle East cooking.

1. Aleppo Pepper

Undoubtedly, one of the spiciest peppers on the Middle Eastern spicy ingredient list, Aleppo pepper, is a spice of Syrian origin that has yet to gain Middle-East-wide acceptability.

Aleppo pepper is used in specific Arabic dishes only when the chef is sure that exceptionally spicy food is required. It is added alongside tomatoes in the sauce-making stage of Arabian cooking.

Since most stew and wet foods involve making a soup or a sauce and then saturating it with another ingredient like bread, rice, or stuffing, there are plenty of opportunities to use Aleppo pepper in Middle Eastern cooking.

There are three ways to add Aleppo pepper:

• Flakes – These are added the same way as red pepper flakes. 
• Powder – Ground peppers can be used as a fine powder in the sauce-making stage
• Whole pepper – To reduce the spiciness of the overall dish, you can add the pepper whole to have a lower surface area.

In some instances, you can swap Aleppo pepper for red chili to get the spiciest possible version of a dish. However, this is not standard practice, even in spicy food cooking in the Middle East.

2. Paprika

Paprika is one of the few spices in the Middle Eastern ingredient roster that you don’t need to substitute to make a dish spicier. Cumin is often replaced with dried coriander and black pepper mix to make the dish spicier.

Similarly, allspice is replaced with nutmeg in some recipes. But since Paprika can range from mild to pungent, you can simply change the degree of heat of Paprika to get a spicier dish. The Paprika used in Tunisian, Algerian, and Moroccan cuisine is noticeably hotter than the one used in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

3. Allspice

This spice has Jamaican origin but is one of the most recognizable ingredients in spicy Arabic food.

Allspice isn’t hot but has a bite to it.

When ground and added to a stew or a sauce, it raises the Picante levels of the final dish. However, most standard Middle Eastern dishes use whole dried berries, which reduces the temperature of the dish.

4. Cinnamon

You typically find cinnamon in desserts, fragrances, oils, and even coffee in the West, Middle Eastern use of the spice is quite specific to main courses.

Powdered cinnamon would make Middle Eastern food too spicy, so whole cinnamon quills are used in rice and stews. Boiling cinnamon and using the water as a soup base can also increase the overall heat of a Middle Eastern stew dish.

5. Black Pepper

Black pepper is an Indian spice but has been a part of Middle Eastern cuisine since the 80s.

Households that enjoy hotter food replace cloves with black pepper to make their food spicier. It is used whole in Arab cooking, though you can grind it up to increase the spiciness of a Middle Eastern dish.

6. Sumac

Sumac is an interesting spice because it is sour and not spicy, yet helps make Middle Eastern food taste hotter.

Sumac neutralizes the sweet aspects of some of the ingredients, which helps emphasize the dish’s spiciness. Let’s take the examples of cinnamon and Paprika.

Both of these ingredients are spicy to an extent and have a sweet dimension. Sumac is tangy enough to overpower the hints of sweetness, which brings out the spicier side of cinnamon, Paprika, and even dry coriander.

7. Turmeric

Turmeric is another spice that Middle Eastern cooking shares with Indian cooking.

Turmeric isn’t outright spicy and has a noticeable, sometimes offputting, bitter taste. That’s why a minimal amount of turmeric is added to Middle Eastern dishes. It helps bring out the flavor of the meat and vegetables being cooked.

It can mute the milder flavors in a significant enough quantity, allowing the spicier ingredients to be more noticeable.

8. Cumin

Cumin is one of the most essential spices in Middle Eastern cooking because (in small quantities) it is mild enough to provide a barely noticeable aftertaste. However, doubling the amount of cumin used in a dish can make the result significantly spicier.

Cumin is one-third as spicy as the milder Mexican spices, which also shows the difference between the heat factor of Middle Eastern cuisine and Mexican food.

9. Baharat Spice Mix

One of the most used spices in Middle Eastern food is a combination of different spices. Don’t let the exotic name trick you because the word ‘baharat’ literally translates to ‘spices.’ Different households have their own variations of the mix based on their family traditions.

You can find generic Baharat mix at grocery stores in the Middle East. It contains black pepper, cardamom, dried coriander, nutmeg, and cloves. It also features a bulk of the spices listed above but none in enough quantity to make the overall mix too spicy.

You can add more baharat spice mix when cooking a Middle Eastern dish to get a more balanced high-heat spice profile. But if you’re looking to get hot and spicy Arabic food without balancing flavors, you can bet on Aleppo pepper, black pepper, and Paprika.

Conclusion: What Spices Are Used in Middle Eastern Cooking?

When Middle Easterners make spicy food, they add more of the spicier ingredients from their traditional spice rack. Otherwise used with restraint, the following spices are among the hottest ones used in Middle Eastern cooking:

The spices Middle Easterners use for spicy food cooking are Aleppo pepper, Paprika, allspice, cinnamon, black pepper, sumac, turmeric, and cumin. Some of these spices are mixed together in a classic Arabic spice mix called Baharat.