Ethiopian Spices: Berbere, Mitmita, Niter Kibbeh and the Spices Behind Them

In Ethiopia, Marcus Samuelsson says, every family makes its own berbere. Ethiopian cooking leans less on single spices than on a few house-made blends and seasoned fats: berbere, mitmita, awaze and spiced clarified butter. Behind them is a long list of plants. A 2025 ethnobotanical review documents 63 species used as spices and condiments across Ethiopia,¹ and describes the country as a center of origin and domestication for several spices, korarima among them.

At a glance

Katzer, a long-standing spice reference, notes that Ethiopian spice use parallels Indian tradition in several ways, and that berbere resembles the Indian masalas.² You’ll often read that this comes from Ethiopia’s role in an ancient spice trade with Europe, but we found no source for that.

Berbere

Berbere is Ethiopia’s essential chile-spice blend, and the name means “hot” in Amharic. In Ethiopia the same word also means a coarse powder of medium-hot to hot chiles. The blend is a quintessential Ethiopian one that typically contains Capsicum. Those chiles are New World plants: Capsicum annuum is native from the southern United States to Brazil and the Caribbean.

What goes in. There’s no single recipe. Marcus Samuelsson says every family makes its own berbere and dries it in the sun.⁵ Katzer describes chiles toasted until they darken, then ground with long and black pepper, ginger, coriander and fenugreek, with sweet notes from cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and even allspice, and a little ajwain.² The 2025 review adds that coriander and cumin are vital components, and that rue sometimes goes in.¹ Fenugreek carries sotolon, which PROSEA says gives it its characteristic curry smell.⁶

How hot. Depends who you ask. Katzer calls the mix rather hot,² while Samuelsson describes his as a mild chile blend mellowed with sweet and floral flavors.⁵ The heat comes down to the chiles each cook picks.

How it’s used. Doro wot and misir wot are among the dishes that depend on it. Katzer describes doro wat as chicken and hard-boiled eggs in a gravy of chiles, onions and garlic, and says berbere is traditionally used for mutton.² Doro wat often gets called Ethiopia’s national dish, though we found no source for that title. See our full berbere profile and berbere substitutes.

Mitmita

Mitmita is the fiercer blend. Kittee Berns, in her Ethiopian cookbook Teff Love, calls it an intensely hot spice blend traditionally served with Ethiopian meat dishes, made from ground bird’s eye chiles, which are hotter than cayenne.³ The 2025 review confirms that the dried, powdered fruits of Capsicum frutescens are essential to it, and lists korarima among its ingredients.¹ Berns’s own version swaps in cayenne and adds ground cardamom.

Mitmita is a versatile condiment for raw meat, injera, bread and cooked roots or tubers. Its best-known partner is kitfo, minced raw beef from the Gurage region. Saveur’s kitfo is seasoned with mitmita and spiced clarified butter and heated just until it’s lightly warmed but still raw.⁷ The review credits much of Gurage-style kitfo’s distinctive smell to koseret (Lippia adoensis), an aromatic herb grown in Gurage home gardens.¹

We couldn’t trace a few details you’ll often see about mitmita: that it ranks second in popularity after berbere, that it normally contains salt and cloves, and that it’s served with the raw beef or mutton dish called kurt or tere saga.

Awaze

Awaze (also awazi) is berbere made into a paste with water, wine or mead, usually served as a table condiment. It’s one of Ethiopia’s hot pepper sauces. We couldn’t trace recipes that add olive oil, or that combine berbere with mitmita, to a source we opened.

Niter kibbeh (spiced clarified butter)

Clarified butter is common in Ethiopian cooking, and Katzer notes that the Ethiopian version is made with spices and used more as a flavoring than as a cooking fat.² Saveur explains that Ethiopian cooks simmer fragrant spices, onions or garlic into the clarified butter, then strain it. The clarified butter turns into a brilliant yellow oil that keeps for about 2 months.⁴

Saveur’s recipe flavors a pound of butter with cardamom pods, coriander seed, fenugreek seed, long pepper, nigella, grains of paradise, dried basil and dried thyme.⁴ The 2025 review adds that cumin is a critical ingredient of clarified butter, and that koseret leaves are integral to spiced butter among the Gurage and Oromo.¹ There’s no turmeric in Saveur’s version. Saveur notes that clarified butter turns brilliant yellow on its own.

Mekelesha

The 2025 review names mekelesha alongside berbere, mitmita and awaze as one of Ethiopia’s complex spice blends that vary by region, but gives no ingredient list.¹ You’ll often see it described as a nutmeg, cinnamon and black pepper blend sprinkled over stews just before serving. We couldn’t trace that. For context, Katzer says the traditional meat stews are seasoned mostly with long pepper together with black pepper, nutmeg, cloves and turmeric.²

The individual spices

Korarima. The review says korarima holds a unique place in Ethiopian cooking. It goes into hot pepper sauces like mitmita and awaze, into spice blends, and even into coffee. The review also notes rising market demand for forest spices like korarima and long pepper, many of them wild-harvested.¹

Timiz and Piper capense. The review lists Piper capense, which it calls Ethiopian black pepper, among the native and naturalized species in Ethiopian blends.¹ It’s a scrambling shrub or tree in the pepper family, Piperaceae, native to tropical and southern Africa, the Comoros and Madagascar. The Amharic name timiz often gets attached to it, but Katzer lists timiz as an Amharic name for long pepper, Piper longum,² a different species native from the eastern Himalaya to Indo-China. The sources we reviewed don’t settle which plant the name means in a given market. We couldn’t trace the descriptions of a smoky, tobacco-like smell.

Cumin’s old reputation. Ethiopian cumin had a name in antiquity: Pliny the Elder noted that some people preferred African, Ethiopian or Egyptian cumin.

Safety: mycotoxins in chile

The chiles in berbere are the main safety concern. In a 2023 study of Ethiopia’s berbere supply chain, chile pods were spread right on the ground to sun-dry, and all 100 berbere samples collected tested positive for mycotoxins.⁹ That’s one study of one supply chain. See our berbere profile for the regulatory limits.

Related pages

• Berbere and berbere substitutes
• Fenugreek and cooking with fenugreek
• Long pepper and long pepper vs. black pepper
• Cardamom and nigella seeds
• The master list of herbs and spices