Cemen Paste substitute

Best substitute

Homemade cemen from ground fenugreek

3 tbsp ground fenugreek + 6 to 8 crushed garlic cloves + 2 tbsp sweet paprika + 1 tsp hot pepper + water to a paste

Best for coating pastirma

Close match

The real thing, and it is a four-ingredient blend rather than a manufactured product, so making it is easier than finding it.

Other cemen paste substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Red pepper paste (biber salcasi) plus ground fenugreek
Close match
Use ¼ cup pepper paste + 1 tsp ground fenugreek + 2 grated garlic cloves, for every ¼ cup cemen
The fastest route if your cupboard has Turkish pepper paste but not the full spice line-up.
What changes
Best for
meze and spreads, sandwiches with pastirma, quick rubs for grilled meat, adding depth to soups and beans
Pepper paste brings a concentrated sweet-roasted pepper flavour and often salt and oil, so the result is glossier, saltier and fruitier than real cemen, which is drier and more austere. The fenugreek is non-negotiable and one teaspoon is enough to make it read as cemen. Rest it thirty minutes before tasting, since raw ground fenugreek tastes harsher than hydrated fenugreek.
3Harissa plus ground fenugreek
Different taste
¼ cup harissa + 1 tsp ground fenugreek, and skip any extra hot pepper
A supermarket chilli paste standing in for the pepper-and-garlic base.
What changes
Best for
spreads and sandwiches, marinades, when you want a hot version
Harissa is much hotter than cemen and comes loaded with caraway, coriander and cumin, so the paste tastes North African and spiky rather than Anatolian and pungent, and the caraway in particular fights with the fenugreek. Use it when heat is welcome, cut it with a spoonful of tomato paste and a little olive oil to soften it, and do not add any further chilli.
4Fenugreek leaves (kasuri methi) in place of the seed
Taste and texture differ
Use 1 tbsp crushed dried leaves for every 1 tsp ground seed
The other fenugreek, useful if the leaf is what you have, with the important caveat that it behaves nothing like the seed.
What changes
Best for
adding fenugreek aroma to a rub or a stew, when the paste is a seasoning rather than a coating
Dried fenugreek leaf is hay-like, gently savoury and only faintly bitter, where the seed is pungent, sharply bitter and slightly maple-scented. It also will not thicken, because the paste's body comes from ground seed swelling in water, so you get flavour without structure and the mixture stays loose. Add a spoonful of ground almonds or breadcrumbs if you need it to hold together.
5Curry powder as a fenugreek proxy
Different taste
Use 1 tsp curry powder for every 1 tsp ground fenugreek
A genuine last resort, since most curry powders contain fenugreek among many other things.
What changes
Best for
emergencies, cooked dishes where cemen is a background flavour
You get some fenugreek, and you also get turmeric, coriander, cumin and often cinnamon, so the paste turns yellow-brown and tastes unmistakably of curry. In a spread eaten plain with bread this is obviously wrong. Stirred into a stew or a marinade where it is one of several flavours, it passes. Do not use it on pastirma, where the coating is tasted directly.
6Paprika and garlic paste, and calling it what it is
Different taste
Use the same amount by volume
The honest option when you have no fenugreek in any form: make a good garlic and pepper paste and do not pretend it is cemen.
What changes
Best for
rubbing on lamb or beef before roasting, spreading on bread, seasoning kofte
Nothing in an ordinary spice rack tastes like fenugreek. Its bitterness and maple-savoury aroma are why cemen tastes the way it does, so a paste without it is a pleasant garlic and paprika paste and not a substitute. Made with two tablespoons of sweet paprika, four grated garlic cloves, a teaspoon of cumin, olive oil and salt, it is a genuinely useful thing to have, just a different one.

What is Cemen Paste?

Cemen Paste is a thick reddish-brown paste of ground fenugreek seed, crushed garlic, water and sweet and hot red pepper, written cemen in Turkish and chemen in English, best known as the pungent coating on pastirma and also eaten as a spread, and its job is fenugreek's maple-and-celery bitterness carried in something sticky enough to cling.

Cooking tips

Rest the paste. Ground fenugreek needs at least an hour in water to hydrate, and raw unhydrated fenugreek tastes bitter and dusty in a way that ruins the mixture. Overnight in the fridge is better, and expect it to stiffen so you will need to thin it again.
Go light on the fenugreek and heavy on the garlic. Too much fenugreek tips the paste into a soapy, medicinal bitterness that cannot be corrected, so start with less than the recipe says and build. Garlic is what makes cemen taste alive, and it should be grated to a smooth pulp on a microplane so there are no chunks.
For a meze, thin it with olive oil and a squeeze of lemon rather than more water, which turns it into something you can actually scoop with bread. A spoonful of tomato paste or pepper paste rounds off the bitterness.
Pastirma is air-dried cured beef, and the cemen is applied as a coating after the meat is cured, not as part of the cure itself. Curing meat is a food-safety process: do not improvise a cure, do not reduce the salt or the curing salt in a tested recipe, and follow published guidance such as the National Center for Home Food Preservation at nchfp.uga.edu rather than adjusting quantities to taste.
Cemen bought ready-made in a Turkish deli is usually thicker and saltier than homemade, so taste before you add salt to a dish, and thin it with water or oil before spreading.

Frequently asked questions

Can I just leave cemen out?

On a pastirma sandwich, yes, and many people scrape it off anyway because it is pungent, though pastirma without cemen loses half of what makes it distinctive. In a recipe that uses cemen as a seasoning paste for meat or a base for a stew, replace it rather than omitting it, because it is carrying the garlic, the pepper and the bitterness all at once. A pepper paste with a teaspoon of ground fenugreek covers it.

Cemen, chemen, cimin: which spelling is right?

Cemen is the Turkish spelling, written with a cedilla under the first letter and pronounced roughly chemen, which is why English recipes often write it that way. You will also see chemen, cemen paste and simply fenugreek paste on labels and in recipes. They all refer to the same fenugreek, garlic and pepper mixture.

Why is my cemen bitter or soapy?

Too much fenugreek, or fenugreek that has not been given time to hydrate. Fenugreek seed is naturally bitter and that bitterness intensifies when the paste is fresh and the seed is still dry. Fix it by adding more paprika, garlic, tomato paste and a little olive oil to dilute, then let it sit for a few hours. Next time use two thirds as much fenugreek.

Can I use fenugreek powder from an Indian grocer?

Yes. Methi dana powder is exactly the same seed, ground, and it is often cheaper and fresher than jars sold in Western spice aisles. What you cannot swap in is kasuri methi, the dried leaf, which tastes far milder and will not thicken the paste. If you only have whole seeds, toast them very briefly and grind them in a spice grinder, since whole fenugreek is too hard to crush by hand.

Is cemen spicy?

Traditionally it is pungent rather than fiery. The dominant sensations are garlic and fenugreek's bitter, savoury aroma, with warmth from sweet paprika and a modest amount of hot pepper. Turkish delis sell both mild and hot versions, so if you are making it yourself, add the hot pepper last and to taste, which is easier than trying to tame a paste that is already too hot.

Related substitutes

More sauces & condiments substitutes

Cemen Paste substitute

Other cemen paste substitutes

2Red pepper paste (biber salcasi) plus ground fenugreek

3Harissa plus ground fenugreek

4Fenugreek leaves (kasuri methi) in place of the seed

5Curry powder as a fenugreek proxy

6Paprika and garlic paste, and calling it what it is