Za'atar herb

• za'atarزعتر

  Arabic

  In Arabic za'atar names the herb and also the blend made from it, which is why a recipe calling for za'atar can mean either.

Savoury, herbal and slightly bitter, more astringent and less sweet than Mediterranean oregano and more rounded than thyme alone. It is not sour — the sourness in the blend is sumac — and it is not hot. On its own it is quieter than people expect, which is much of why it is nearly always used with sesame and salt.

Warm, herbal and distinctly thyme-like, with an oregano roundness behind it and a faint mineral dryness. It smells of hot dry hillside rather than of a garden herb, and it releases far more on being rubbed than on being opened.

Grey-green to sage-green when properly shade-dried, in coarse rubbed flakes with visible leaf structure. A bright green suggests colouring or a different plant; a fawn brown suggests age or sun-drying.

Coarse dried flakes with some stem, slightly furry in the mouth if used in quantity without oil. It is almost always eaten with olive oil, which softens it and carries the aroma.

• Carvacrol — Usually the dominant compound and the source of the warm oregano character. Its proportion varies substantially between species and populations, which is a large part of why za’atar from two regions can smell noticeably different.
• Thymol — The thyme note, and the compound that most distinguishes the Levantine species from ordinary Mediterranean oregano. It is also what ajwain and thyme share, which is why all three read as related.
• p-Cymene and gamma-terpinene — Biosynthetic precursors to both of the above and present alongside them, contributing the drier, more resinous edge.

Give it oil and give it friction. Rubbed dry over a finished dish it is muted; mixed with olive oil into a loose paste it becomes the thing people actually mean by za'atar, and that paste is the basis of manakish, of the bread dip, and of most of its uses on meat and vegetables. Crush it between your fingers as it goes on. Do not toast it — the sesame in the blend is toasted before mixing and the leaf is not, and scorched za'atar is acrid. The one decision to make first is which ingredient the recipe wants: the herb alone is unsalted and purely herbal, the blend is roughly a third sesame and salt and behaves quite differently at the same volume.

Manakish and other flatbreads above all, then mixed with olive oil as a dip for bread, scattered on labneh, yoghurt and fresh white cheese, rubbed onto chicken and lamb before roasting, and over roast vegetables, tomatoes and eggs. It works with olive oil, bread, labneh, halloumi, tomato, cucumber, chicken, lamb, aubergine and chickpeas, and alongside sumac, sesame, garlic, lemon and mint. In almost every case it is delivered in or with fat, because the aromatics need something to carry them.

• baking — The characteristic use, as manakish — the herb mixed with olive oil and spread on dough before baking. The oil protects the leaf from the oven heat and the aroma bakes into the bread rather than off it.
• toasting — Rarely toasted alone, and easily scorched if it is. The sesame in the blend is toasted before mixing; the herb is not.
• infusing — Steeped in olive oil, which draws out the aromatics and is how the herb is most often delivered — the oil is doing the carrying and the dipping at once.
• grinding — Reduced to powder it loses aroma quickly and takes on a dusty quality. Rubbed rather than ground is the traditional form and the better one.

Rub a pinch hard between your palms and smell. A dried leaf gives up almost nothing until it is crushed, so a jar that smells faint on opening may be perfectly good — and if crushing produces no warm thyme note, it has become dried leaf and will only add bitterness.

• No aroma after hard crushing
• Fawn or brown rather than grey-green
• Clumping, or a musty smell

• Volatilisation of carvacrol and thymol, leaving leaf matter that contributes bitterness and little aroma
• Photo-bleaching of the leaf colour, which tracks the aromatic loss
• Moisture uptake and clumping

Buy it rubbed rather than ground, and buy it from a Levantine grocer if you can, where the herb is sold separately from the blend and both are fresher and cheaper than a supermarket jar. The real buying decision here is not the form but which ingredient you are actually after: a great many recipes written in English say za'atar and mean the blend, and a jar of the plain herb used at the same quantity will taste thin and unsalted. If a recipe lists za'atar alongside sesame and sumac, it means the herb.

• Establish first whether you are buying the herb or the blend — the packaging frequently does not distinguish them and the two are not interchangeable by measure.
• Grey-green rather than fawn or vividly green, in coarse rubbed flakes with visible leaf structure.
• Little stem and no dust at the bottom of the bag.
• A warm thyme-like aroma when a pinch is crushed hard.

No consumer grade exists. Commercial quality turns on leaf-to-stem ratio, colour and aroma. For blends the meaningful question is the proportion of herb to sesame, salt and any filler, which is almost never stated.

Lamiaceae

A low, woody-based perennial subshrub of dry rocky Levantine hillsides, with small grey-green downy leaves and spikes of small white or pale flowers. It is drought-adapted, aromatic in the sun, and gathered wild as much as it is cultivated.

The eastern Mediterranean and the Levant, where the plants grow wild across dry rocky hillsides from Turkey to Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

• Lebanon — major producer
• Syria — major producer
• Jordan — notable producer
• Turkey — notable producer
• Israel — notable producer. Also the jurisdiction with the best-documented regulation of wild harvesting of these species.

Cut in late spring and summer, traditionally just before or at flowering, when the leaf is most aromatic. In much of the region the gathering and drying is a household activity rather than a commercial one.

1. Cutting — Aerial parts cut at or just before flowering.Why: Oil content peaks around flowering and falls afterwards.
2. Shade drying — Dried in shade rather than direct sun, spread thinly and turned, over several days.Why: Direct sun bleaches the leaf and drives off the volatile oil, so shade drying is a quality step rather than a convenience.
3. Stripping and rubbing — Dried leaf stripped from the woody stems and rubbed rather than milled, leaving a coarse flake.Why: A powder loses aroma quickly and behaves differently in the blend; the coarse rubbed leaf is what the blend is built around.
4. Sieving — Sieved to remove stem fragments and dust.

No published consumer grading standard. Commercial quality turns on leaf-to-stem ratio, colour, freedom from dust and aroma, none of which appears on a retail label.

The recorded risks are stem and dust bulking, and — in the blend rather than the herb — substitution of the Levantine species with cheaper common oregano or thyme, or extension with wheat flour or roasted grain. A blend sold cheaply is more likely to be padded than a bag of the herb alone.

Historically gathered wild, and increasingly cultivated — partly for supply and partly because wild harvesting has been restricted in some jurisdictions on conservation grounds. Cultivated material is more uniform and generally milder.

Mediterranean and semi-arid: hot dry summers, mild wet winters, poor stony soil. The aromatic oil content rises under water stress, which is why hillside-gathered herb is generally held to be more fragrant than irrigated cultivated herb.

Gathered and eaten in the Levant for a very long time, and named in texts whose translation has been argued over for centuries — the Hebrew ezov and Arabic za’atar are usually rendered as hyssop in English bibles, and the plant intended was almost certainly one of these Lamiaceae rather than Hyssopus officinalis. It has never been a trade spice in the way pepper or cinnamon were; it grew where it was eaten, and it stayed there.

A local and regional herb rather than a long-distance commodity, and one whose international presence is recent and follows Levantine migration rather than colonial trade. Most of what is sold outside the region is the blend rather than the herb.

Long documented use across Levantine tradition as a digestive and for respiratory complaints, and a widespread folk association with mental alertness that attaches to za'atar specifically. Recorded as documented tradition. SpiceHQ holds no clinical source and makes no health claim.