Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Fenugreek along with all the trcipes employing Fenugreek presented on this site, with 270 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Fenugreek recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Fenugreek as a major wild food ingredient.

Fenugreek, Trigonella foenum-graecum whose native realm extends from the eastern Mediterranean across to China, though it is now cultivated worldwide. It can easily be grown as a pot-herb, both for its leaves and the seeds which are used as an herb. It is a member of the family Fabaceae that includes the nitrogen-fixing legumes. As such fenugreek can survive in very poor soil. The name 'fenugreek' is derived from the Latin foenum-graecum (Greek hay).



The leaves of fenugreek (image, right) are used as an herb both in the raw and dried state. In the dried form it is often sold as 'methi' and it is this that provides the 'curry' flavour in many Indian and Pakistani dishes. The seeds are used as a spice (often sold ground as 'ground fenugreek'). This is an important element of many pickles, curry powders and pastes, and is often encountered in the cuisine of the Indian subcontinent and Thailand. The seeds have a bitter taste that mellows when cooked and a very distinctive 'curry-like' aroma which is created by the aromatic compound, sotolone. If toasted before being ground fenugreek develops substituted pyrazines (the same scent compounds as found in cumin).



Fenugreek is also one of the ingredients in the making of injera/taita, a type of bread unique to Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine. It is also sometimes used as an ingredient in the production of clarified butter (ghee).