Recipe
🥙 LUNCH
Pasta al Sugo e Berbere
Spaghetti tossed in silsi, the Eritrean tomato sauce spiked with berbere, the everyday pasta of Asmara.
Eritrean · easy · serves 4
prep 15 min · cook 30 min
~383 cal · 14g protein · 79g carbs · 2g fat · 6g fiber · 10g sugars · 0g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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AI-generated illustration
Pasta al sugo e is the plate that shows how deeply Italy settled into Eritrean kitchens. Italy ruled Eritrea from the 1880s until 1941, and the settlers who filled Asmara, the city they built to look like a little Rome, brought pasta with them. It never left. Today spaghetti is an ordinary staple in the capital, sold in every shop and cooked at home as readily as any local grain.
What makes it Eritrean rather than merely Italian is silsi, the tomato sauce cooks build on melted onions, garlic and tomato and then load with , the red chili and spice blend that runs through the whole cuisine. The sauce comes out warm with heat and fragrant with and ginger, a world away from a plain Italian sugo, and it clings to the spaghetti in glossy red coils.
It is lunch food, quick and comforting, the kind of thing a family eats midweek and an Asmara cafe serves all afternoon. Eritreans abroad make it to taste home, and it sits happily on the same table as and stew, two empires' worth of history on one plate.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally vegetarian, vegan and dairy-, egg-, nut- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 4
12 oz spaghetti
2 medium onions, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 carrot, finely grated
2 tbsp tomato paste
14 oz can chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp spice blend
Hard to find? sweet paprika and cayenne with ground fenugreek, coriander, ginger and a little cinnamon and clove - berbere is a blend rather than one spice, so rebuilding it roughly works; the fenugreek is the note people miss most if they leave it out
3 tbsp olive oil
to taste salt
Instructions
1
Cook the onions gently in the olive oil until soft and golden, about 10 minutes, then stir in the garlic and grated carrot for a minute more.
2
Add the tomato paste and berbere and fry until darkened and fragrant, so the spice loses its raw edge.
✎ Chef’s note
Frying the berbere in the oil for a minute before the tomatoes go in is what turns silsi from harsh to round. If it starts to catch, add a splash of water.
3
Pour in the chopped tomatoes, season with salt, and simmer 15 minutes until the sauce is thick and glossy.
4
Meanwhile boil the spaghetti in well salted water until al dente, saving a cup of the water before draining.
5
Toss the drained pasta through the silsi with a splash of the pasta water until every strand is coated, and serve at once.
Italo-Eritrean home cooking, Asmara.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Asmara. Asmara sits high on the Eritrean plateau, eating berbere-red stews scooped with injera in the shared style of the Horn. Italian colonial rule left pasta and espresso alongside zigni beef stew and spiced clarified butter.
🗺️
Eritrea. Italian rule left more than a memory. Pasta al sugo e berbere is the emblematic hybrid, spaghetti under a sauce built on Eritrean spice rather than an Italian one, and Asmara's cafes still turn out espresso and cappuccino as a matter of course, in a modernist city centre built during the colonial period.
🌍
Africa. Much of what reads as timeless African cooking is younger than the Atlantic crossings. Maize, cassava, groundnut, chilli and tomato all arrived from the Americas after 1500 and pushed older crops aside; millet, sorghum, teff, yam and fonio are the ones that were already here, and the map still shows the join.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Eritrea
ZigniA fiery Eritrean beef stew built on berbere spice and long-cooked onions, eaten with injera.
TibsiCubes of beef seared hard with onion, green chili and berbere until the edges brown, an Eritrean celebration dish eaten with injera.
Kicha Fit-fitShredded flatbread tossed with spiced clarified butter and berbere, a warming Eritrean breakfast.
Browse all Eritrea recipes →
Good to know
Storing it: Best fresh. Leftovers keep 2 days refrigerated; loosen with a splash of water or oil as you reheat so they do not clump.
Make it a Eritrea meal
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Frequently asked questions
What is Pasta al Sugo e Berbere?
Spaghetti tossed in silsi, the Eritrean tomato sauce spiked with berbere, the everyday pasta of Asmara.
Where does Pasta al Sugo e Berbere come from?
Pasta al Sugo e Berbere is a Eritrean dish from Asmara, Eritrea.
Can Pasta al Sugo e Berbere be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Pasta al Sugo e Berbere recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions, including several at once such as gluten-free and dairy-free together. Treat them as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Pasta al Sugo e Berbere safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Pasta al Sugo e Berbere take to make?
About 45 minutes total (15 minutes prep, 30 minutes cooking), serving 4.
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