Walking into a Persian or Middle Eastern grocery store can be overwhelming – the rice section alone can have 20+ options! Combining experience with my family’s preferences, I am sharing a list of pantry items and brands I use regularly and think are the best to help make your trip to the store easier.

Woman in kitchen with packaged pantry foods.

Important Note on Prices

I have found that these items are significantly less expensive to purchase if you make the trip to your local Middle-Eastern or Persian supermarket. I have linked to online items, but some are as much as 4x the prices at the store.

🌟 Top 8 Must-Haves

  • Dried Limes: As the name suggests, these are limes that have been completely dried out until they become hard. Dried limes are a great way to add a tinge of sour to dishes, which is one element that creates the Persian umami flavor. They are shelf stable, and you can buy them online from Amazon, or easily find them at your local Middle Eastern grocery store.
  • Basmati Rice: A staple to serve with all Persian stews or in the many different rice dishes. You will find 20+ kinds of basmati rice at the Middle-Eastern market from brown to par-boiled.
  • Pomegranate Molasses: It adds an incredible flavor and you’ll find it often adding a tangy taste like tamarind to classic Persian dishes. You can make homemade pomegranate molasses by simmering down pomegranate juice until it reaches a thick, syrupy consistency, or buy a bottle ready to use.
  • Saffron: A yellow spice that is the dried stigma of a specific crocus plant. It has a sweet, floral, light, and earthy taste. Unfortunately, the real stuff is expensive and you can’t get around it – it’s actually the most expensive spice by weight, because the harvest of saffron is very small and tedious.
  • Cumin or advieh: Advieh is a spice blend that is used in rice, stew, and kabob recipes. Cumin is a great substitute most of the time. You can buy the blend pre-mixed, or mix your own advieh to store in your spice cabinet.
  • Barberries: A tart, tiny berry that tastes like a cross between goji berries and cranberries. It is used in many rice dishes, and even some desserts.
  • Tea with Cardamom: To brew traditional Persian tea, you need to brew loose leaf black tea with cardamom pods in a double boiler. The black tea is usually a loose leaf Ceylon, but Assam or Darjeeling work well, too.
  • Rose water: Rose water is a delicate flavored water made by distilling rose petals in water. You’ll find that some varieties are more strongly flavored than others and some that taste more artificial. You can buy it in bottles or make your own rose water.

✨ Top 7 Spices

Spices are really the backbone of Persian cooking, as they combine to create the unique and complex flavors that thread through all the best Persian dishes. These herbs and spices come in big bags or in bulk at the Persian supermarket, and are usually less expensive than what you can find at the American grocery store.

  • Saffron
  • Cardamom
  • Cumin
  • Advieh
  • Turmeric
  • Fenugreek
  • Dill

🍒 Top 4 Dried fruit, Seeds, & Nuts

  • Jumbo dates
  • Dried barberries
  • Tokhmeh: These roasted and spiced seeds are always on the coffee table. The most common are watermelon, pumpkin, and squash.
  • Dried mulberries
  • Roasted nuts: The most popular are pistachios, cashews, and then mixed varieties.
  • Dried sour cherries

🌾 Top 4 Grains, Beans, and Legumes

  • Basmati Rice
  • Green Lentils
  • Barley
  • Dried chickpeas and ground chickpea flour
  • Kidney Beans

🍬 Top 5 Snacks

  • Barberry lavashak – Tangy, sour, fruit leather that makes the roof of your mouth hurt if you have too many, but so worth it.
  • Canned dolma – Always in my pantry or opened in my fridge, these are a great filling snack, addition to a charcuterie board, or addition to a salad.
  • Turkish pistachio cotton candy – Melt-in-your-mouth cotton candy that is same-same but different from the cotton candy you’re probably thinking of.
  • Saffron nabat – Always a part of my afternoon tea pick-me-up. It’s special, and satisfies my sweet craving.
  • Chili and sour cherry lavashak candies – A chewier, bite-sized version of the lavashak that has a wonderful taffy-like texture and all the same sour tang.

🍬 Top 6 Other

  • Ghand & nabot: Ghand are sugar cubes which you’ll see referred to as broken sugar, while Nabat is a kind of hard rock candy. These different forms of sugar have different melting rates. When serving tea, it is important to offer both kinds of sugar, so your guests can choose if they want to stir the Nabat into their tea (fast dissolving) or put a ghand cube in their mouth while taking small sips of hot tea (slow dissolving). When I have a stomach ache, my grandmother tells me to stir some nabat into hot water to help soothe my stomach.
  • Herb mixes: There are some Persian recipes that require a lot of fresh herbs. Instead of finding and chopping all your fresh herbs, a great shortcut is to purchase the ready-made dried or frozen herb mixes at the Persian or Middle Eastern grocery store. For the recipes below, you can find fresh herb mixes ready-to-go in the freezer section or dried herb mixes in the spice aisle. I prefer the frozen ones over the dried ones, but both work great.
  • Kashk: Kashk is a dairy product that is essentially a form of dried buttermilk. It has a tangy and sour flavor, like yogurt or sour cream. You can buy it in a dried, crumbled form or as a wet paste with a yogurt-like texture. I prefer the paste, which is more traditional for Persian cooking.
  • Reshteh: Reshteh are Persian enriched flour noodles which are both vegetarian and kosher. The most common recipe that uses reshteh is Ash-e-Reshteh, which is a noodle soup with herbs and kashk.
  • Quince syrup or sharbat
  • Spicy cucumber pickles

🛒 Brands I buy & Recipes that use them

Basmati Rice

Brand to Buy

Recipes

Bag of rice on a shelf.

Chickpea Flour

What to Buy

You can either buy whole dried chickpeas like my grandma does and grind them yourself, or buy the Sadaf coarse chickpea flour.

Recipes

Bag of chickpea flour.

Ghand & Nabat

What To Buy

Sadaf Rock Candy with Saffron

Recipes

Yellow rock candy in a bag.

Herbs & Herb Mixes

What to Buy

Recipes

Containers with pictures of herbs.

Kashk

What to Buy

Sadaf Kashk (Wet)

Recipes

Jar of beige liquid with sheep on the label.

Limoo Amani – Dried Limes

What to Buy

Sadaf Dried Whole Limes

Recipes

Bag of dried limes with yellow label.

Pomegranate Molasses

What to Buy

Cortas Pomegranate Molasses, Sadaf brand is also good

Recipes

Reshteh

What to Buy

Sadaf Reshteh Enriched Flour Noodles

Recipes

Packages of noodles.

Rose Water

What to Buy

Cortas Rose Water, Sadaf brand with the gold cap is good

Recipes

  • Faloodeh (Persian Rose Granita with Vermicelli)
  • Bastani (Persian Saffron Rose Ice Cream)
  • Sekanjabin (Persian Shrub-Style Drink)
Bottles of rose water on a countertop.

Saffron

What to Buy

If you’re at the Middle-Eastern or Persian supermarket, ask the person at the register. They usually keep it there because it’s expensive and they usually only have a couple options.

You can find Sadaf saffron online and it is good, too.

Recipes

Saffron in a plastic container with gold writing.

Tea

What to Buy

Recipes

Boxes of tea on a shelf.

Recipes to get you started

If you’re keen to delve deeper into cooking Persian food, start with some of these favorites.

2 Comments

  1. I prefer using FARD Rock Candy as they have a very good taste that lingers in your mouth. They are made in California, USA

    Reply

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