Timmur

Timmur is a highly pungent, sharp-tasting dried berry from the prickly ash shrub family. It is often mistaken for black pepper, but it has an entirely different flavor and is, in fact, not related to the black pepper family. Timmur grows in thorny bushes in high altitude areas of Nepal. The bushes are found wild throughout the hilly slopes of Nepal where the temperature is cold. When the berries ripen, they turn a deep red color around mid-September. The harvesting lasts for three to four weeks. Local farmers pick the berries by hand. The sharp thorns make the picking very difficult, and sometimes they have to use sticks to break the branches. The collected berries are dried in the sun until all the moisture has evaporated. They are then sorted by hand, cleaned of thorns, branches, and leaves. The dried berries are split into two halves and the shiny black seeds are removed because of their bitterness. The dried berries have a rough, wrinkled, and uneven surface and their aroma lies in the split covering of the pod, not in the seed.