Timmur is Nepali Sichuan pepper, from the Zanthoxylum family. It is not a chilli and not a peppercorn: it is citrusy, faintly resinous, and produces a mild tingling numbness on the tongue rather than heat. It is the ingredient behind the sensation people notice in momos and sekuwa and cannot usually name.

Jimbu is a dried Himalayan herb from the allium family, tasting somewhere between chives and onion with a slight smokiness. It is bloomed in hot oil or ghee at the start of a dal or a soup. It is the defining smell of a Nepali kitchen and is used in almost no Indian cooking.

Is Nepali food hot or just heavily spiced?

Heavily spiced, moderately hot. The depth comes from ginger, garlic, cumin, coriander, turmeric, timmur and jimbu, none of which are chillies. Most of the actual chilli heat sits in the achar served on the side, so you set your own level. The sadheko family is the genuine exception and is properly fiery.

Where can I buy timmur and jimbu in New Zealand?

Both turn up in Nepali and Indian grocery stores in Auckland, usually dried and whole. Timmur is sometimes sold as Nepali pepper or under its Sichuan pepper name. Buy small quantities: both lose their aromatics within months of opening.

Nepali Spices Explained: Timmur, Jimbu and the Rest

Two ingredients do most of the work in making Nepali food taste distinctly Nepali, and neither is chilli. Meet timmur and jimbu.

30 July 20267 min read

Ask what makes Nepali food taste Nepali and most people reach for chilli. It is the wrong answer. Two aromatics do most of the work, and neither is hot at all.

Timmur: the tingle you cannot name

Timmur is Nepal’s Sichuan pepper, from the Zanthoxylum family. Despite the name it is neither a chilli nor a true peppercorn. It is the dried husk of a small berry, and its effect is not heat but a mild, buzzing numbness across the tongue and lips, arriving a second or two after the flavour.

The flavour itself is citrusy and slightly resinous, closer to grapefruit peel than to pepper. Used lightly it lifts everything around it. Used heavily it takes over and makes food feel anaesthetised, which is why restraint matters more with timmur than with almost anything else in the cupboard.

You will meet it in momo filling, in sekuwa marinade, in sadheko, and in achar. If you have eaten a good momo and noticed something faintly fizzing that you could not identify, that was timmur.

Buy it whole and crush it just before use. Ground timmur loses its aromatics within weeks and what remains tastes dusty rather than bright.

Jimbu: the smell of a Nepali kitchen

Jimbu is a dried herb from the high Himalaya, an allium, related to onions and chives. It arrives looking like dried grass and smells like almost nothing until it hits hot fat.

That is the whole technique. A spoonful of oil or ghee is heated, jimbu goes in for a few seconds until it darkens and releases, and the result is poured over a finished dal. The Nepali term for that final tempering is jhanne. It is the last thing that happens to the dish and it is the reason a Nepali dal smells different from an Indian one.

The taste is savoury, faintly smoky, somewhere between chive and cooked onion, with a mineral edge from growing at altitude. Almost no Indian cooking uses it, which makes it one of the clearest markers between the two cuisines. More on that in Nepali vs Indian food.

Mustard oil, which counts as a spice here

Not technically a spice, but it behaves like one. Mustard oil is pungent, sharp and slightly bitter, and it does not disappear into a dish the way a neutral oil does.

It is central to the sadheko family, where cooked meat or vegetables are tossed cold with raw mustard oil, lemon, onion, coriander and chilli. Nothing is cooked after the oil goes in, so its rawness is the point. That is what gives mutton sadheko and wai wai sadheko their sharp, almost aggressive character.

The working base

Underneath the distinctive two sits a base shared with much of South Asia, used in Nepali proportions.

Ginger and garlic, heavily, usually pounded together into a paste. Not an accent, the foundation.
Cumin, toasted, providing the earthy backbone.
Coriander seed, warmer and more citrus than cumin, usually in a larger quantity.
Turmeric, for colour and a faint bitterness.
Fenugreek, in small amounts and easy to overdo, where a little bitterness is wanted.
Dried red chilli, mostly for the achar rather than the dish itself.

Note what is missing. There is no standard garam masala finish, no cardamom-and-clove sweetness, and far less cream or butter than northern Indian restaurant cooking uses. Nepali food is comparatively lean, and the spices have to carry it without dairy to soften them.

Where the heat actually lives

This is the practical part. In Nepali cooking the chilli mostly sits in the achar, the tomato and chilli pickle served alongside, not in the dish itself.

Which means you control it. A plate of momos is aromatic rather than hot; how hot it becomes depends on how much achar you use. That is a deliberate structure, and it is why “is Nepali food spicy” has an annoying answer: heavily spiced, and as hot as you make it.

The exception is sadheko, which is built around raw chilli and mustard oil and is genuinely fiery. If you want to be tested, order the mutton sadheko.

Tasting them for yourself

Timmur and jimbu are both in what we cook at Snax on Commerce Street in Auckland CBD. The clearest place to taste timmur is the sekuwa, where the marinade leans on it, or in our momo filling. For the sharp mustard-oil character, order the mutton sadheko.

If you want the wider tour of the food these spices go into, read the ten Nepali dishes worth knowing, or just look at the menu.