Georgian Spices & Herbs: The Complete Guide to a Flavor-Obsessed Cuisine

Walk through any Georgian market — Dezerter Bazaar in Tbilisi, the spice stalls in Kutaisi, a village roadside stand in Kakheti — and you'll notice something immediately: Georgians are obsessed with seasoning. Not heat for its own sake (that's more of an Abkhazian thing), but layers of flavor built from dried herbs, ground seeds, fermented pastes, and spice blends that have no real equivalent anywhere else on earth. Georgian food without its spices would be like Italian food without olive oil — technically possible, spiritually empty.

This guide covers every spice and herb you'll encounter in Georgian cooking, from the "big five" blends that every Georgian kitchen keeps on hand to the regional specialties that most visitors never learn about. Whether you're trying to replicate kharcho at home or just wondering what that greenish-yellow powder at the market actually is, this is your reference.

The Big Five: Georgian Spice Blends

These are the five seasoning blends that define Georgian cooking. Every home cook has at least three of them. Most restaurants use all five daily. If you stock nothing else, get these.

1. Khmeli Suneli (ხმელი სუნელი) — The All-Purpose Blend

If Georgian cuisine had a signature spice, this is it. Khmeli suneli (literally "dried spice") is a warm, aromatic, slightly nutty blend that goes into soups, stews, bean dishes, walnut sauces, and marinades. Think of it as Georgia's garam masala — not a single flavor, but a complex, layered warmth that makes everything taste more like itself.

The color is greenish-yellow, the texture is fine powder, and the smell is unmistakable: earthy fenugreek, bright coriander, a whisper of mint, and something floral underneath. It's not hot at all. The warmth is aromatic, not capsaicin.

Where to use it: Lobio, kharcho, satsivi, chanakhi, any walnut-based sauce or paste, bean soups, marinades for grilled meat, pilaf, stewed vegetables. Honestly, it's hard to go wrong. Add it in the last 5–10 minutes of cooking — prolonged heat kills the aromatics.

2. Svanuri Marili (სვანური მარილი) — Svanetian Salt

If khmeli suneli is the all-rounder, Svanetian salt is the secret weapon. From the remote mountain region of Svaneti in northwestern Georgia, this is not just salt with herbs mixed in — it's a carefully pounded blend of garlic, salt, blue fenugreek, coriander, dried marigold, caraway, and hot pepper, worked together in a wooden mortar until the garlic's moisture binds everything into a slightly damp, intensely aromatic compound. Making a kilogram takes several hours of hand-pounding.

The flavor is savory, garlicky, and complex — somewhere between flavored salt and a concentrated spice paste. It amplifies rather than dominates. Sprinkle it on roasted potatoes, stir it into scrambled eggs, rub it on meat before grilling, toss it with roasted vegetables. Anywhere you'd use regular salt, Svanetian salt makes the dish specifically, recognizably Georgian.

Where to use it: Ojakhuri, kubdari, roasted potatoes, grilled meat, fried eggs, salads. It replaces regular salt in almost everything.

3. Adjika (აჯიკა) — The Hot Paste

Adjika is a hot, aromatic paste (or dried powder) from the Samegrelo and Abkhazia regions. Unlike harissa or sriracha, adjika is more complex than "just heat" — it's fermented red peppers pounded with garlic, fresh herbs, coriander, blue fenugreek, and salt into a thick, crimson paste that's simultaneously fiery, savory, and deeply herbal. The dried version is a coarse red powder with a similar flavor profile.

Good fresh adjika has a slow-building heat that doesn't overwhelm. The garlic is sharp, the fenugreek adds depth, and the fermentation gives it a slightly tangy edge. It's closer to a condiment than a spice — Georgians put it on the table next to tkemali and eat it with bread, grilled meat, or stir it into soups.

Where to use it: As a table condiment with bread and grilled meat, stirred into kharcho or lobio, rubbed on meat before grilling, mixed into dipping sauces, added to stews. Dry adjika works well in any dish that calls for heat plus complexity.

4. Utskho Suneli (უცხო სუნელი) — Blue Fenugreek

This is the single most important individual spice in Georgian cooking, and one of the hardest to find outside the Caucasus. Utskho suneli is ground blue fenugreek — specifically, the seeds and pods of Trigonella caerulea, a plant that grows wild in Georgia's northern mountains. The name literally means "foreign spice," which is ironic because it's now more Georgian than almost anything else in the spice rack.

The flavor is nutty, slightly sweet, with a mild bitterness that's nothing like the intense bitterness of common fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum). It's the backbone of khmeli suneli, the defining ingredient in satsivi and pkhali, and appears in virtually every walnut-based Georgian dish. Without it, the food tastes good but not Georgian.

Where to use it: Satsivi, pkhali, badrijani nigvzit, any walnut paste or sauce, bean dishes, stews, lobiani.

5. Imeretian Saffron (იმერული ზაფრანა) — Dried Marigold

This is not real saffron. It's dried, ground marigold petals (Tagetes or Calendula), and it's one of Georgia's most distinctive ingredients. Imeretian saffron gives walnut sauces their characteristic golden-orange color and adds an earthy, slightly musky flavor that you can't replicate with turmeric (which adds color but the wrong flavor) or actual saffron (which is too floral and too expensive).

You'll recognize it at markets by its bright orange-gold color and subtle, hay-like smell. It's especially important in walnut-based dishes: the color of a properly made satsivi or pkhali comes partly from marigold. It also goes into churchkhela and various holiday dishes.

Where to use it: Satsivi, pkhali, bazhe sauce, walnut pastes, chakapuli, holiday dishes, churchkhela.

Essential Fresh Herbs

If you eat in Georgia for even a single day, you'll notice: fresh herbs are not a garnish here. They're a food group. Every meal comes with a plate of whole herbs — cilantro, basil, tarragon, dill — eaten raw, by the fistful, alongside whatever's on the table. Georgian cooking uses more fresh herbs per dish than almost any other cuisine, and the specific combination is what gives the food its character.

Individual Dried Spices

Beyond the blends and fresh herbs, these individual spices show up constantly in Georgian recipes. Most of them are familiar from other cuisines but used in distinctly Georgian ways.

Regional Spice Profiles

Georgia is small — about the size of West Virginia — but the regional variation in seasoning is dramatic. Mountain communities developed entirely different flavor profiles from the lowlands, and western Georgia's proximity to the Black Sea gave it a different palette than the eastern wine country.

The Walnut Connection

You can't discuss Georgian spicing without talking about walnuts. Walnuts aren't a spice in the technical sense, but in Georgian cooking they function as one — ground walnuts form the base of dozens of sauces, pastes, and fillings, and those walnut preparations are where Georgian spices do their most important work.

The classic Georgian walnut paste — the one that appears in badrijani nigvzit, pkhali, satsivi, and bazhe — is essentially ground walnuts + garlic + cilantro + utskho suneli + marigold + vinegar or pomegranate juice. The spices transform what would be plain nut butter into something complex, earthy, and distinctly Georgian. Without the utskho suneli and marigold, it's just walnut sauce. With them, it's Georgian walnut sauce — and the difference is everything.

Buying Georgian Spices

This is where things get practical. If you live outside Georgia, sourcing authentic Georgian spices requires some effort — but it's entirely doable, and the quality difference between genuine Georgian spices and generic substitutes is enormous.

Substitution Guide

Sometimes you can't find the real thing. These substitutions won't make the dish taste Georgian, but they'll get you in the right ballpark.

Which Spice Goes Where

This is the practical reference — a quick lookup showing which of our recipes use which key Georgian spices.

Common Mistakes

Frequently Asked Questions