Sumac is a spice: the dried fruit of Rhus coriaria, ground into a tart red powder that tastes of lemon. Zaatar is a blend, built from wild thyme, toasted sesame, salt and sumac itself. So the two are not rivals. One of them is an ingredient in the other.
Below: what each one is, how they taste, a table that settles the difference, and how a Turkish kitchen handles both. The first-hand parts come from the makers in Gaziantep, Hatay and Datça.
What is sumac?
Sumac is a ground spice made from the dried fruit of Rhus coriaria, a shrub that grows wild across the Mediterranean and southern Türkiye. The berries ripen dark red in late summer, dry, then go through the mill with a little salt to become a coarse brick-red powder. In Turkish it is sumak (sumac).
No country uses it more freely than Türkiye, where it sits on kebab-house tables the way black pepper sits on ours. Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon reach for it just as often.
Quality shows in the texture. Good ground sumac clumps slightly when you pinch it, because the fruit still carries its own oil, and the colour leans towards wine rather than orange. Pale, free-flowing powder has usually been cut with salt or sat too long. Sumac spice milled in Türkiye is left deliberately coarse.
Edible sumac is not poison sumac
Worth settling early, because much of what people ask about sumac is really about a rash. The culinary spice comes from Rhus coriaria. Poison sumac is Toxicodendron vernix, a wetland shrub from eastern North America, a different genus, and never food anywhere.
Sumac sold in a jar by a food shop is Rhus coriaria. Anything you have read about blistering belongs to that other plant, and to a doctor rather than a spice merchant.
What is zaatar?
Zaatar is a spice blend, not a single plant. The classic mix is dried wild thyme or Syrian oregano, toasted sesame, salt and sumac, ground into something herbal, nutty and quietly sour. You will see it written zaatar, za’atar or zatar; all three are the same word.
Some confusion is built into the name. In Arabic, za’atar is also the herb itself, so one shop hands you leaves and the next a finished mix, both correctly labelled. When a recipe calls for zaatar spice, it means the blend. Zaatar is Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian, Jordanian and Turkish all at once, and the ratios shift with the place: more sesame in Lebanon, more sumac in Palestine, a darker roast in Aleppo.
Zahter, the Turkish branch of the family
Türkiye has its own version and its own word: zahter (the Turkish za’atar). It belongs to Hatay and Antakya on the Syrian border, where wild mountain thyme grows on limestone slopes, and to Gaziantep, where the blend takes a different turn.
The Gaziantep breakfast zahter we carry comes from the Tahmis roastery, and its ingredient list surprises most visitors: chickpea powder, melon and watermelon seeds, terebinth berries, boiled wheat, sesame, fennel, coriander, sumac, peanuts, thyme, cumin, chilli flakes, lemon powder and salt. Those terebinth berries are the wild fruit behind menengiç coffee. Note the peanuts if you cook for a nut allergy.
Sumac vs zaatar: what is the difference?
The difference is one of kind: sumac is a single spice, zaatar is a blend that contains it. Sumac is the ground red fruit of one plant, sour and lemony. Zaatar mixes dried wild thyme, toasted sesame, salt and sumac into something herbal and nutty, with that sourness underneath. Want acidity, buy sumac; want a finished seasoning, buy zaatar.
| Sumac | Zaatar (za’atar) | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | One spice, one plant | A blend, four ingredients or more |
| Made from | Dried, ground berries of Rhus coriaria | Wild thyme or oregano, sesame, salt, sumac |
| Colour | Deep red to purple | Green-brown, flecked with red and sesame |
| Taste | Sharp, fruity, lemon-like sourness | Herbal and nutty first, sour underneath |
| Contains the other? | No | Yes, sumac is a standard ingredient |
| Usual job | Sprinkled at the end, on onions, kebab, hummus, eggs | Dipped with olive oil, baked into bread, rubbed on chicken |
| Turkish name | sumak | zahter |
Sumac is a single note. Zaatar is a chord, and sumac is one of the notes in it.
What does sumac taste like?
Sumac tastes sour and fruity, close to lemon zest with the bitterness taken out and a little salt left in. There is a light astringency at the back, the same tug you get from cranberries, and almost no aroma or heat to argue with the rest of the plate.
That sourness is fragile. Long cooking dulls it, so sumac goes on at the end: over the finished dish, into a dressing, stirred through yogurt off the heat. Marinades are the exception: rub it into chicken or lamb before they meet the heat and the acidity has time to work.
How to use sumac and zaatar in a Turkish kitchen
Sumac onions, the kebab-house classic
Sumac onions are the most Turkish use of the spice, and the simplest. Slice an onion into thin half-moons, salt it, rub the salt in until the slices soften and weep, then toss with a heavy hand of sumac and plenty of chopped parsley. That is the pile beside every kebab from Adana to Berlin, and the same trick makes piyaz, the Turkish white bean salad, taste of a proper grill house.
Beside the sumac on that table there is usually isot, the dark Urfa pepper, sun-dried until it turns almost black. Abroad it gets shelved as Aleppo pepper, a different pepper from northern Syria. For smoke rather than lemon, isot is the one.
Zaatar bread and the breakfast table
Zaatar bread is where most people meet the blend: flatbread painted with zaatar and olive oil, baked until the sesame toasts, sold across the Levant as manakish. At a Turkish breakfast the same idea shows up undressed. The zahter goes into a shallow dish, olive oil on top, bread torn and dipped, with olives, white cheese and Turkish honey taking the rest of the table.
After that it goes anywhere: rubbed into chicken before roasting, over roasted vegetables, whisked into a dressing.
Sumac vinegar, the one most people never meet
Sumak ekşisi, sumac vinegar, is the part of this story that rarely leaves Türkiye. The berries are steeped instead of dried and milled, and out comes a dark, sweet-sour vinegar that tastes like sumac with the dust removed. Ours is made by hand in Datça, on the Aegean coast.
Use it where lemon would go when you want something rounder: a salad dressing, grilled fish, a lamb marinade, a splash into lentil soup. It sits in the pantry beside pomegranate molasses and carob molasses.
What can you use instead of sumac?
The standard sumac substitute is lemon zest with a pinch of salt: about a teaspoon of finely grated zest plus a quarter teaspoon of salt for each teaspoon of sumac. That gets the sourness and the citrus, though not the colour.
Other swaps: lemon juice when the dish can take the liquid, or amchoor (dried mango powder). For a zaatar substitute, mix two parts dried thyme, two parts toasted sesame, one part sumac and half a part salt. Without sumac the blend still works, but it loses the sour edge that makes it recognisable.
How to store sumac and zaatar
Keep both in airtight jars, in the dark, away from the stove. Sumac holds its colour and sourness for about a year that way; past its best it fades from wine-red towards brown-orange.
Zaatar runs on a shorter clock, because toasted sesame goes stale faster than dried herbs. Six months is a fair working life. Neither belongs in the fridge: every time the jar comes out, condensation follows it in.
Where to buy sumac and zaatar
Availability is the real problem. In every market we checked, shoppers are asking whether their local chain stocks it, and when it does appear the sumac is often pale and heavily salted. We send both from Türkiye, along with the rest of the Turkish spice shelf.
Add the whole spice set to cart
One red powder that makes food taste of lemon without wetting it, and one green blend with that powder already inside. Put sumac on an onion salad tonight; save the zahter for a slow breakfast.
Frequently asked questions
Are sumac and zaatar the same thing?
No. Sumac is a single spice, the ground fruit of Rhus coriaria. Zaatar is a blend of dried herbs, toasted sesame, salt and sumac. Every jar of zaatar contains sumac; no jar of sumac contains zaatar.
What is the English name for sumac?
Sumac is the English name, and there is no other. The word came from the Arabic summaq into most European languages: sumak in Turkish, sommacco in Italian, zumaque in Spanish, sumagre in Portuguese.
What is zaatar in English called?
There is no single English word. The blend is sold as zaatar or za’atar; the herb behind it is usually labelled wild thyme or Syrian oregano. In Turkish both go by zahter.
Is sumac good for you?
The internet is full of confident verdicts on that. We sell spice rather than advice, so we stay with what we can vouch for: where sumac grows, how it is milled, how it tastes. For your diet, a doctor knows more than a spice merchant.
