Shatta substitute

Best substitute

Homemade shatta

8 oz (225 g) fresh red chillies, 4 garlic cloves, 1 tbsp salt, 2 tbsp lemon juice, ¼ cup olive oil; makes about 1 cup

Best for ful medames

Close match

The actual ingredient, from four things most shops sell year round.

Other shatta substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Sambal oelek plus garlic and olive oil
Close match
Use 1 tbsp sambal oelek + 1 grated garlic clove + 1 tsp olive oil, for every 1 tbsp shatta
An Indonesian fresh-chilli paste with the same coarse texture and salty acidity.
What changes
Best for
ful medames, eggs, rice and lentils, sandwiches, as a table condiment
The best off-the-shelf option, because it is built the same way: crushed fresh chillies, salt and vinegar, with no warm spices to get in the way. The coarse, seedy texture is right. What is missing is the garlic and the olive oil, which is why adding both matters more than it sounds. Sambal is also usually a touch sweeter and more one-dimensional, so a squeeze of lemon helps. Some brands include garlic already, in which case go easy on the extra clove.
3Harissa thinned with lemon juice and olive oil
Different taste
Use 2 tsp harissa + 1 tsp lemon juice + 1 tsp olive oil, for every 1 tbsp shatta
The other great North African chilli paste, loosened to shatta's looser consistency.
What changes
Best for
tagines and stews, roasted vegetables, soups, marinades
Works well cooked into a dish and is noticeably off as a raw table condiment. Harissa is built on dried rehydrated chillies with caraway, coriander and sometimes cumin, so it is deeper, earthier and distinctly spiced where shatta is bright and simple. Colour is a darker brick red. Cooked into lentils or a stew nobody will complain; spooned onto a plate of ful medames next to bread, the caraway announces itself immediately. Thinning it is essential, because harissa straight from the tube is much thicker than shatta.
4Chilli flakes bloomed in olive oil with garlic and lemon
Taste and texture differ
1 tbsp chilli flakes + 3 tbsp olive oil + 1 grated garlic clove + 1 tbsp lemon juice + ½ tsp salt makes about ¼ cup
A store-cupboard version that needs no fresh chillies at all.
What changes
Best for
eggs, ful and beans, drizzling over roasted vegetables, flatbread and dips
The best no-shopping route. Warm the oil gently, take it off the heat, stir in the flakes and let them steep five minutes before adding the garlic, lemon and salt so the garlic stays raw and sharp. The honest difference is that dried chilli tastes toasty and slightly sweet rather than green and fresh, so this reads more like a spicy Middle Eastern chilli oil than like shatta. Aleppo pepper flakes make a milder, fruitier version and are the closest dried chilli to what shatta uses.
5Sriracha plus lemon, garlic and salt
Taste and texture differ
Use 1 tbsp sriracha + 1 tsp lemon juice + ¼ grated garlic clove + a pinch of salt, for every 1 tbsp shatta
The easiest option, adjusted to undo sriracha's sweetness.
What changes
Best for
sandwiches and wraps, eggs, as a quick table hot sauce
Perfectly usable and not remotely authentic. Sriracha is smooth, noticeably sweet and vinegar-forward, so a plate of ful medames dressed with it tastes rounder and sweeter where shatta is salty and sharp. The lemon and salt do a lot to pull it back. The texture is the other giveaway: shatta is coarse and flecked with chilli and seeds, sriracha is a smooth ketchup-like gel. Use it when you want heat now and are not trying to reproduce the dish exactly.
6Turkish hot pepper paste (biber salcasi)
Different taste
Use the same amount plus 1 tsp lemon juice and a pinch of salt per tbsp
A Turkish paste of sun-ripened red peppers and chillies, close in body and colour.
What changes
Best for
stews and soups, kofta and meatball mixes, marinades, spreading on bread with cheese
A very good match for red shatta's colour and thickness, and it shares the salted-and-matured character. It is fruitier and sweeter from the ripe peppers, less garlicky, and generally milder in heat, so a dish made with it is more mellow and rounded than one made with fresh-chilli shatta. Adding lemon and a crushed garlic clove closes most of the gap. Buy the hot version rather than the sweet one, which has almost no heat at all.

What is Shatta?

Shatta is Shatta, also written shata or shattah, is the everyday Egyptian and Palestinian chilli condiment: fresh red or green chillies pounded with salt and garlic and loosened with lemon juice or vinegar and olive oil, often left to ferment for a few days before use.

Cooking tips

Shatta is a salty condiment as much as a spicy one, and that is the thing people miss when they swap in a mild bottled hot sauce and find the dish tastes flat. If your substitute is low in salt, add salt to the plate, not more hot sauce, or you end up with something painfully hot and still underseasoned.
Red and green shatta are not used the same way. Red, made from ripe chillies, goes on ful medames, eggs, rice and sandwiches. Green, made from unripe chillies and often blended with parsley or coriander, goes with grilled meat, fish and falafel, where its fresh grassy sharpness cuts the fat. If a recipe specifies one, that choice is doing something.
If you are fermenting shatta the traditional Palestinian way, by salting chopped chillies and leaving them at room temperature for two or three days before blending, use the full amount of salt the recipe gives and keep everything pressed under the brine or oil. The salt level is what keeps a room-temperature ferment safe, so it is not a number to reduce for taste. Never water-bath can or seal homemade shatta for shelf storage; keep it in the fridge.
Store homemade shatta in a jar with a thin layer of olive oil poured over the surface. The oil cap stops the top drying out and darkening, and the sauce keeps around a month in the fridge, getting slightly mellower and more rounded as it goes.
A spoonful of shatta stirred into a finished soup, tagine or bowl of lentils tastes completely different from the same spoonful cooked in from the start. Raw, you get the garlic and the sharp acid up front; cooked, those soften and you are left mostly with heat. Egyptian and Palestinian home cooking mostly uses it raw at the table, so add it late.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between shatta and harissa?

Both are North African and Middle Eastern chilli pastes, but they are built differently. Harissa is Tunisian, made from dried chillies rehydrated and ground with caraway, coriander and garlic, and it is thick, earthy and warmly spiced. Shatta is Egyptian and Levantine, made from fresh chillies with salt, garlic and lemon or vinegar, and it is thinner, brighter, saltier and much simpler. If a recipe wants a fresh sharp kick at the table, it means shatta; if it wants a deep spiced chilli base cooked into a stew, it means harissa.

Can I just leave shatta out?

Yes, in the sense that it is almost always a condiment rather than an ingredient, so a dish of ful medames, koshari or grilled meat is complete without it. What you lose is the sharp, salty, garlicky lift that the rest of the plate is built to be eaten with, and Egyptian breakfast in particular tastes noticeably plain without something acidic and hot alongside. If you are skipping it, at minimum add lemon juice and salt to the plate, which covers two of shatta's four jobs.

How hot is shatta?

It varies enormously, because it is a homemade condiment and every household picks its own chillies. A typical version made with red cayenne or Fresno chillies is hot but not punishing, somewhere in the range of a strong sriracha, and the salt and acid make it feel sharper than it is. Because you control the chilli when you make it yourself, this is one of the easier hot sauces to dial to your own tolerance: remove the seeds and white pith for a much milder version at the same volume.

Is shatta fermented?

Sometimes. Many Palestinian recipes salt the chopped chillies and leave them at room temperature for a couple of days, which gives a rounder, slightly sour, more complex sauce. Plenty of Egyptian versions are simply blended fresh and used immediately, which tastes brighter and more raw-garlicky. Both are called shatta. If a recipe tells you to let the salted chillies sit before blending, that is the fermented style, and it is worth doing once to taste the difference.

How long does homemade shatta keep?

About a month in the fridge in a clean jar with olive oil covering the surface, and it changes as it sits: the raw garlic bite softens after the first week and the flavour deepens. It does not spoil quickly because it is salty and acidic, but it is not shelf stable, so keep it refrigerated rather than in a cupboard, and do not attempt to can it. If the surface ever grows mould or the smell turns yeasty and off rather than sharp, discard the jar.

Related substitutes

More sauces & condiments substitutes

Shatta substitute

Other shatta substitutes

2Sambal oelek plus garlic and olive oil

3Harissa thinned with lemon juice and olive oil

4Chilli flakes bloomed in olive oil with garlic and lemon

5Sriracha plus lemon, garlic and salt

6Turkish hot pepper paste (biber salcasi)