Dukkah
Dukkah is neither a spice nor a paste — it is something between the two, a dry, coarse mixture that bread, first dipped in olive oil, is pressed into. The name comes from the Arabic for "to pound", which is the whole instruction on texture: pounded, not ground. Blitzed smooth it becomes an oily paste and loses its purpose, because the entire effect is the crunch.
Your own work in that: 8 min.
- Toasting 20 min
- Cooling 10 min
- Pounding 8 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneToast each ingredient separately
Toast in a dry pan one at a time: hazelnuts 8 minutes, almonds 6, sesame 3, spices 90 seconds — about 20 minutes in all. Each has its own timing and grain size — toasted together you would get burnt sesame alongside raw nuts.
Ingredients: 150 g hazelnuts · 80 g almonds · 80 g sesame seeds
Separately — sesame scorches much faster than nuts.Rub the skins off the hazelnuts
Wrap the hot nuts in a clean tea towel and rub vigorously. Most of the skins come away. Left on, they are bitter and papery, and nothing in so simple a mixture will hide that.
Ingredients: 150 g hazelnuts · 80 g almonds · 80 g sesame seeds
The skins are bitter — better rubbed off.Cool completely before grinding
Spread everything on a tray and cool to room temperature. Warm nuts release oil under the blades and the mixture clumps instead of staying loose. Ten minutes you cannot skip.
Ingredients: 150 g hazelnuts · 80 g almonds · 80 g sesame seeds
Grind the spices before the nuts
Grind the spices alone first, finely, in a mortar or grinder. Coriander and cumin are hard and need longer than the nuts; thrown in together they would stay as whole seeds.
Ingredients: 2 tbsp coriander seeds · 1 tbsp cumin seeds · 1 tsp fennel seeds · 1 tsp peppercorns · 1 tsp salt
Pulse the nuts in short bursts
Add the nuts and sesame and pulse in two-second bursts, checking after each. The target is a coarse, uneven crumb the size of couscous. A few pulses too many and it starts clumping into nut butter, from which there is no way back.
Ingredients: 150 g hazelnuts · 80 g almonds · 80 g sesame seeds
A coarse crumb, not nut butter.Serve with oil and bread
Tip into a jar. Serve in a bowl next to a second bowl of olive oil: a piece of bread is dipped first in the oil, then in the dukkah. A dry mixture will not cling to dry bread — the oil is part of the recipe, not an accompaniment.
Ingredients: 100 ml olive oil · 300 g bread
Before you start
Keeping it
Three months in an airtight jar somewhere cool. Nuts go rancid with light and heat — do not keep it on a windowsill or above the hob, however good it looks there.
Beyond bread
Scatter over fried eggs, roast vegetables, hummus, yogurt with oil, or a salad. Dukkah does the job of salt, spice and crunch at once — three things in one spoonful.
The proportions are flexible
This recipe uses 230 g of nuts to 80 g of sesame and about 25 g of spices. Within that frame, swap freely — pistachios, cashews, nigella, sumac. Only keep the ratio of spices to nuts.