homemade dukkah – the easy way to add fragrant crunch to your meals

When you’re looking for your food to be balanced and interesting to eat, you need to add different textures and flavours. I talk more about the principle of flavour and texture balancing here.  One of my favourite ways to add crunch is to add some toasted nuts or seeds to my meals. Homemade dukkah is one step on from that as is it combines toasted nuts with toasted spices and salt. The resulting mix is then ground up (I use my food processor) and can be kept for ages in a jar in the fridge. It sounds a bit random but once you’ve made some you’ll find yourself topping all sorts of things with it.

Dukkah (it literally means ‘to pound’ and is pronounced DOO-kah) is an Arabic spice and nut blend that adds an amazing flavor and texture to a dish. Traditionally it is used as a dip for bread in Egypt. You’d be given a bowl of olive oil and a platter of toasted flatbread along with a bowl of dukkah. Dip the bread in olive oil then into the Dukkah.

Here are just some of the ways I use it:

• On top of avocado and toast
• On top of poached or scrambled eggs and avocado with lemony kale
• Sprinkled on any salad, pasta, stew or soup
• Sprinkled on roast chicken or grilled lamb or fish with yoghurt and salad
• As a crust for baked fish
• On top of cous cous with roasted vegetables and Feta
• On tacos
• On houmus

Homemade dukkah Ingredients:

Don’t stress too much about exact measurements when you are making this, you can also make less dukkah – just remember the ratio – 2 parts nuts : 1 part each sesame seeds, cumin seeds, coriander seeds.