← Back to globe
Salad · Grilled Pepper & Tomato

Hmiss (known locally as Chlita)

Hmiss (known locally as Chlita) — street food from Oran, Algeria
Photo: Indif / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

The name literally means 'sauté' in Algerian Arabic — a nod to the extra pan step that sets it apart from a simple roasted vegetable salad.

Hmiss is a cooked salad of grilled bell peppers and tomatoes, peeled, chopped, and simmered with garlic and olive oil until jammy, often crushed together in a wooden mortar. In Oran it goes by the local name chlita and is served alongside grilled meats or scooped up with bread.

Why it's made this way: Roasting and stewing down peppers and tomatoes stretched a simple garden harvest into a dish that keeps for days, making it a practical mainstay of home and street tables across western Algeria.
Read it in context →

More from Algeria

Selecto Karantita (Calentica) Mhajeb (M'hadjeb) Doubara (Dobara) Zlabia Rechta
Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries. Something wrong here? Tell us in the comments below. Photo credits.