Harissa, a spicy paste made with red hot chili peppers,is one of Tunisia’s most famous culinary products. For fans of spicy food, the ways to use harissa are almost endless. Harissa can enhance the taste of soups, pasta, grilled meats or sandwiches and goes very well with a variety of other ingredients from international cuisine. Since the seventeenth century, when the first chili peppers were gro
wn on the Cap Bon peninsula, the recipe for harissa has been handed down from one generation to the next. Also small family businesses that have been producing harissa since the first half of the twentieth century have remained faithful to the traditional recipe. Product awareness now goes beyond the Tunisian borders and harissa already knows great success in a growing number of countries. But success has also attracted imitators. Foreign companies producing hot sauces choose to call their preparations "harissa" even when the list of ingredients includes tomatoes, sugar or vinegar. To protect the harissa as a product of Tunisian soil, the "Food Quality Label Tunisia" was launched in 2014 following the combined efforts of business and the Tunisian government. Efforts to promote the "Food Quality Label Tunisia" are lead by the Tunisian Group for Canned Food Products (GICA) and the private Tunisian harissa companies with the support of the PAMPAT project implemented by the UN agency UNIDO with Swiss funding.
