Harissa sauce. Spicy Chilies, Warm Spices & Refreshing Mint In A North African Seasoning Blend. Use a mortar and pestle to crush toasted seeds; add cumin, mint, and salt, and crush until finely ground. Compared to your average big-brand hot sauce, harissa brings another dimension.

Cumin, caraway seeds, and coriander are some common additions. The precise makeup of the added spicing varies from place to place. Mix all ingredients in food processor and serve at room temperature with fish. You can have Harissa sauce using 10 ingredients and 6 steps. Here is how you achieve that.

Ingredients of Harissa sauce

You need 1 handful of fresh chillies (your choice in type and heat).
Prepare 1 tsp of Caraway Seeds.
You need 1 tsp of Cumin seeds or ground.
It's 1 tsp of Coriander seeds or ground.
It's 4 of peeled garlic cloves.
You need 1 tsp of smoked paprika.
It's 1 tsp of rock salt.
Prepare of Virgin Olive oil.
Prepare of Tomato puree.
It's of Preserved lemons.

Harissa is a North African red chile paste or sauce made of a few simple ingredients including chiles, garlic, olive oil, citrus and a few warm spices. This versatile harissa recipe is slightly sweet, smoky, tangy, and just enough spicy but not too hot. A staple of North African and Middle Eastern cooking, harissa is a hot pepper sauce that's great on almost anything! Plus, it's made from healthy ingredients -- including olive oil, chile peppers, and garlic.

Harissa sauce step by step

Get your chillies and put them in a bowl. I used around 9 red chillies as that was all I had ready on my plant. Cover them with boiling water and cover the bowl for around 15 mins. There is plenty of heat with this number. If you like things a little less hot, use less chillies and vice versa if you want hot hot hot..
Whilst the chillies are soaking, take your caraway seeds, cumin seeds and coriander seeds and heat them on a dry pan or skillet. Only a low to medium heat is needed here and they will soon become nice and fragrant. Take them off at this point and grind them down. Also add some salt at this time. A teaspoon here will give a salty enough taste and more really does start to make it too salty but if you like it like that, you can always add more later than now..
Take your chillies from the water 1 at a time (don't discard the water though you may need it). Cut off the stems then deseed them by splitting them and scraping the seeds away so you are just left with the outer chilli. Once they are all deseeded,, add them to the grounded seeds..
Hard work time now, get grinding this so you really break down the chillies. You can use a processor for this of course but I love the control of pestle and mortar. You need to grind down till you only have small bits of chilli left, no chunks. This will be a dry mix so you can start to add olive oil to create paste; 1 Tbsp first whilst you grind it down and then 1/2 Tbsp a time after to your choosing. You may also want to loosen it with teaspoon of the water the chillies were in as that adds a nice flavour too. Be sure to scrape the mix from the sides too. Add half a teaspoon of lemon preserve if you like a zesty kick and a teaspoon of sweet pimentón or smoked paprika for that lovely earthy smoked taste. I used both smoked and lemon and it gave a lovely contrast..
Drop your peeled garlic in and grind into the mix then taste. Now is when you can start to tweak to your own tastes. I added a squeeze of tomato puree here and a little more salt. You can add anything from fresh lemon juice, preserved lemon, fresh or dried mint, fresh cilantro, sun-dried tomatoes, tomato paste, cayenne, paprika really. Your choice, experiment and at the end you'll have a superbly versatile paste/dip..
Keep any you don't eat straight away in an airtight jar and cover with some oil over under storage. You should re-oil each time you use the harrisa and you can keep this for about a month under these conditions..

You can find prepared harissa in grocery stores, but it's also easy to make homemade harissa. Add it to cooked veggies, baked fish, stews. Cook garlic in same skillet, covered, over medium-low heat. Harissa Sauce using Dry Red Chillies. To make this paste using dry red chillies, use a mix of mild and hot dry chillies.