The Best Harissa Paste for Every Taste

Harissa is a lot of things to a lot of different people. It can be an integral part of shakshuka, a tasty way to add concentrated flavor and spice to braises, and it’s also what happened to pop up that one time I googled my friend Marissa. Turns out she is a North African pepper paste. Who knew?!? (When I told her this, she was confused…psh, Marissas just don’t get it).

All that is to say, both my friend harissa my friend Marissa (apparently) are North African pepper pastes that are usually made of roasted bell pepper, chilis native to Tunisia called baklouti peppers (or other chili peppers), garlic, and spices such as cumin and caraway, salt, occasionally lemon juice, and olive oil. The best harissa paste tastes kind of like tomato paste, if tomato paste were made of peppers, spices, garlic, and a bit of toasty magic. They can run the gamut from sweet to spicy to salty to smoky depending on the brand and your preferences, so when we set out to find the best harissa paste, we judged them on overall flavor—in short, does it taste good? That said, we also gave some points for adherence to the condiment’s traditional ingredients and whether it tastes like harissa we’ve had in reputable North African and Middle Eastern restaurants. Let’s taste the paste!

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Best Caraway Flavor

Villa Jerada Harissa No. 1

Amazon

This harissa paste, which we purchased from Amazon, was polarizing for our taste testers. Some loved it, others hated it, and the main thing causing that divide was the caraway flavor being extremely strong with this one.  But it is still on this list because if you like rye and/or pumpernickel bread, or if you know what caraway tastes like independent of those things and happen to like it, you will like this. This tastes like rye bread plus spices—caraway truly dominates and, understandably, is higher up on the ingredient list too (only a touch of cumin flavor in this one). Worth noting that this was the most smoothly pureed, so if that’s a plus for your purposes, this might be the best harissa paste for you.

Credit: Merc / Amazon

Rating:

6.5/10

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Best for Charcuterie

Mina Mild Harissa

Instacart

Mina Mild Harissa could literally be used as a pepper jam on a charcuterie board with some goat cheese and crackers. It tastes very sweet, like bell peppers and pepper jam, and the spices are much less present. Why? Well, there aren’t any. The ingredients in this bad boy are just peppers, garlic, olive oil, salt, vinegar, and citric acid. This one reads as more of a condiment/relish than an ingredient for a braise or a sauce, but hey, it still tastes good, so it is on this list. If you like a chunkier, less potent harissa paste, this one is your guy.

Credit: Merc / Instacart

Rating:

7/10

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Best Sauce Style

Mina Spicy Harissa

Instacart

We expected Mina Spicy Harissa to be a copy/paste of the mild version, and to some extent it is—it literally has the exact same ingredient list, but they must just use spicier peppers for this one. That said, those peppers must also be more complex, because this harissa is not only spicier but also more savory than the mild version. Some taste testers detected a bitter aftertaste, which I kind of got, but for me it wasn’t any more bitter than I would expect a spoonful of pepper paste to be. Like its mild counterpart, this spicy harissa paste is less a paste and more a coarsely mashed sauce, but the spice stays with you for a bit—it really set our lips a-tinglin’.

Credit: Merc / Instacart

Rating:

7/10

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Best Mild Harissa

Zwïta Mild Harissa

Amazon

I’m going to level with you: Zwita Mild Harissa straight-up tastes like what I want tomato paste to taste like. That is to say, it tastes like concentrated salty sun-dried tomato sauce and garlic (even though it is actually sun-dried peppers—no tomatoes to see here, folks). It is tasty, chunky, and packed with savory umami flavor. That said, it has no smoke and no heat, so if you are looking for that in your harissa, then keep reading because this is not the best harissa paste for you. It has the texture of a sambal oelek, and would be a great, flavor-packed harissa to use if you or your guests, or your niece’s teddy bear Stanley (whoever you are cooking for), can’t handle spice.

Credit: Merc / Amazon

Rating:

7.5/10

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Best Traditional

Pūr Spices Medium Harissa

Amazon

Pūr’s medium harissa is the most like capital H harissa. It’s complex, smoothly blended, spicy, umami, and very cumin-forward with just the tiniest hint of caraway and coriander. Notably, the Pūr harissa also has lemon peel and lemon juice that make it sour and give it a nice tangy brightness that balances out the deep and roasty-toasty pepper notes. It is more balanced than the Zwita mild, and certainly the most harissa-like harissa on this list—but the best harissa in terms of overall flavor is yet to come.

Credit: Merc / Amazon

Rating:

9/10

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Best of the Best

Zwïta Smoky Harissa

Amazon

This one kind of blew our minds. It’s super salty and packed with flavor and had a lot of the same spices and chiles as the other harissas on the list, but the smokiness brings it to the next level. The flavor reminded us a bit of chiles in adobo in the best way possible. If you are our here trying to flavormax your shakshuka, your tagine, or your life in general, this harissa has everything—it’s smoky, salty, savory, spicy (but not too spicy), and chock-full of garlic and spices that add depth and even more flavor. This guy is a winner. Then again, if you want a traditional harissa, maybe go with #2. If you want to mix things up, this is the best harissa paste we found.

Credit: Merc / Amazon

Rating:

9.5/10

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