What Spices Go in Shish Tawook, and What Each One Is Doing

Authentic shish tawook is seasoned with paprika, garlic, cinnamon, allspice, oregano and a little cayenne, with black pepper and salt. That is the whole list, and the quantities are modest: this is a mild, warm, tangy dish, not a heavily spiced one.

People who find their shish tawook tastes of nothing have usually under-salted it and over-marinated it. People who find it tastes wrong have usually added cumin, which belongs in shawarma and not here.

The blend, spice by spice

Paprika, 1.5 teaspoons

The largest quantity of any single spice, and mostly there for colour. Sweet paprika, not smoked and not hot. Smoked paprika is a common substitution and it takes the dish somewhere Spanish; it is pleasant and it is not shish tawook.

Garlic, six cloves plus a teaspoon of powder

Both forms, doing different things. Fresh garlic crushed to a paste with salt gives the sharp, immediate note. Garlic powder distributes evenly through the yogurt and gives a rounder background that fresh garlic alone does not, because fresh garlic in a wet marinade tends to sit in pockets.

Crush rather than chop. Chopped garlic does not soften in a twelve minute cook and leaves harsh raw fragments on the finished skewer.

Cinnamon, half a teaspoon

The spice that makes it read as Levantine. Half a teaspoon in 900 g of chicken sounds like nothing and is exactly right. At a full teaspoon the dish starts tasting sweet and faintly of dessert.

Allspice, half a teaspoon

Levantine cooking's signature background note, present in kibbeh, in stuffed vegetables, in the meat filling of almost everything. It carries clove, nutmeg and pepper in one berry.

Onion powder, three quarters of a teaspoon

The one nobody notices and everyone misses. It adds savoury depth without adding moisture or texture the way grated onion would. Leave it out and the marinade tastes slightly hollow in a way that is hard to name.

Oregano, half a teaspoon dried

Dried, not fresh. It is a small herbal lift against the richness of the yogurt.

Cayenne, a quarter teaspoon

Present, barely. Shish tawook is not a hot dish. This quantity registers as a faint warmth at the back rather than as chilli.

Salt and black pepper

A teaspoon of salt and a quarter teaspoon of pepper for 900 g. The salt is not only seasoning: it helps the marinade penetrate rather than sit on the surface, and it is what you crush the garlic against.

What does not go in

• Cumin. The most common mistake. Cumin is central to shawarma and to many Levantine meat dishes, and it makes shish tawook taste like a different dish entirely.
• Turmeric. Wrong colour, wrong earthiness. It belongs in kabsa and Gulf rice.
• Curry powder. Not a Levantine ingredient.
• Sumac. Excellent on the finished plate, and not in the marinade, where its acidity duplicates the lemon without adding anything.

Is shish tawook seasoning the same as seven spice?

No, though they overlap. Baharat, the Levantine seven spice, is typically black pepper, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and cardamom, ground together and used as a general-purpose blend.