Ras el hanout

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Ras el hanout

Ras el hanout or Rass el hanout (Arabic: راس الحانوت) is a popular Moroccan blend of spices that is used across North Africa. The name means "head of the shop" in Arabic and refers to a mixture of the best spices a seller has to offer. There are three types of blends for Ras el Hanout: Lamrouzia, L'msagna and Monuza.

There is no definitive set combination of spices that makes up Ras el hanout. Each shop, company, or person would have their own secret combination containing over a dozen spices. Typically they would include cardamom, clove, cinnamon, ground chili peppers, coriander, cumin, nutmeg, peppercorn, and turmeric.

Some recipes include over one hundred ingredients, some rarely found in Western food, such as ash berries, chufa, Grains of Paradise, orris root, Monk's pepper, cubebs, or dried rosebud. Usually all ingredients are toasted and then ground up together. Individual recipes are often improvised. Ras el hanout is used in almost every kind of food, sometimes rubbed on meat and stirred into rice.

When Ras el hanout included cantharides in its list of ingredients, it has some aphrodisiac properties. However, the sale of cantharides in Moroccan spice markets was banned in the 1990s.^[1]

See also

• Baharat
• Garam masala
• Advieh

Notes

References

• The Gourmet Cookbook, by Ruth Reichl (Ed.), Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-618-37408-6
• The Oxford Companion to Food, by Alan Davidson, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-211579-0
• Davidson, Alan (1999). The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-211579-0. .

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