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LoginBhuna Masala, Mirepoix, And More: A Guide To Aromatics And Variations In Different Cuisines
9 min
18/05/20269 min18/05/2026
What Indians know as bhuna masala, the world knows them as cooking aromatics. It’s the flavour base of any dish, whether a hearty stew or a spiced rice dish. Typical ingredients range from onions, garlic, ginger, celery, peppers, and spices. Every major cuisine in the world has its own flavour base – South Asian cuisine, particularly Indian cuisine, has bhuna masala; Italian and Spanish cuisine hinges on soffritto or sofrito.
Every country has their version of bhuna masala, be it the Philippines or Italy. Bhuna masala is a kind of aromatic, which is the foundational flavour layer that every cuisine builds its dishes on. While masala is the go-to in India and also in some cuisines like Mexico, in other places, aromatics refer to vegetables and herbs that add flavour and aroma to a dish. When cooked at one go, these ingredients create layers of flavour in your food.
Some aromatics are sweet, while others are pungent or astringent, and when put together, they create a flavour base that helps make the finished dish taste impeccable. It’s like fertiliser for your rose garden for your roses to turn out gorgeous, or in this case, the dish to turn out complex and layered. What makes aromatics so fundamental to every cuisine is that they are never the star, and yet the dish falls apart without them.
Before exploring the aromatic blends, it helps to understand each building block that appears again and again across different cuisines.
The single most universally used aromatic ingredient in the world is onions. It forms the backbone of South Asian cuisine's bhuna masala, Italian soffritto, Spanish sofrito, French mirepoix, and the Cajun holy trinity.
Aromatic whole spices like cinnamon, cloves, peppercorn, and fennel are the primary contributors to familiar flavours in many world cuisines, especially Indian. The zest of lemons, limes, and oranges is yet another aromatic ingredient used in South Asian cooking. Garlic sits at the intersection of nearly all of them, present from Italian classics like aglio olio pasta to the Chinese aromatic trinity.
Ginger is a defining aromatic of South Asian and East Asian cooking. In a bhuna masala, it appears as a fresh paste alongside garlic. Indian aromatics classic flavours are garlic, ginger, onion, and ghee, often with turmeric, cumin, coriander, curry leaves, garam masala, cardamom, chilli, and coriander leaf. In Chinese stir-fry cooking, ginger joins scallion and garlic as the foundational trio.
Celery is the aromatic of European cuisines. It appears in the Italian soffritto classico, French mirepoix, and the Cajun holy trinity. Unlike the punchy aromatics of South Asian cooking, celery contributes a quiet, green bitterness that rounds out slow-cooked bases without dominating them.
Carrots bring natural sweetness to European aromatic bases. They are a core component of Italian soffritto and French mirepoix, where they balance the sharpness of onion and celery. They are not typically used as an aromatic in South Asian cuisine.
In some cuisines, tomatoes function not as vegetables but as a flavour addition. They are essential in Spanish sofrito and central to bhuna masala, where they are slow-cooked with onions and spices until the oil separates.
Bell peppers anchor the Spanish sofrito and the Cajun cooking’s holy trinity of onions, celery, and green bell pepper. Green chillies appear in most South Asian aromatic bases, while dried whole chillies are used in the tadka.
What separates South Asian aromatics from European ones most dramatically is the role of whole spices like cumin seeds, mustard seeds, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, bay leaves, which are bloomed in hot oil (tadka or tempering) at the very start of cooking.
Indian aromatic base is mostly masala, and if you move over to places like Europe, you will get fewer spices, more herbs and whole ingredients like onions and celery. So, here are some renowned ones.
Bhuna masala is a slow-cooked aromatic paste at the heart of most North Indian and Pakistani curries. The masala gets the treatment of ‘bhunai’, meaning ‘to be fried’ or ‘to be roasted’. It starts with first frying the aromatics of onions, ginger, and garlic, until a deep golden brown, then cooking the ground spices in the roasted aromatics until they become fragrant.
Standard bhuna masala ingredients:
Red onions (finely sliced or processed)
Ripe tomatoes
Ginger-garlic paste
Green chillies
Turmeric, red chilli powder, coriander powder
Cumin seeds
Garam masala (added last)
Ghee, mustard oil, or neutral oil
The bhunai technique and ingredients for the aromatic base remain the same, just that with chicken or veg involved, the preparation differs a bit. Chicken bhuna masala or bhuna chicken uses marinated chicken in the bhuna masala, whereas veg bhuna masala is directly added after the masala base is ready. It can also be made with other meats and paneer.
This is an umbrella term that features minced vegetables like onion, garlic, carrots and celery and is part of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and a lot of Latin Amrican counties like Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Colombia. There are more countries which share such influences, whether the name, technique or ingredient, read on below the list.
Spanish Sofrito is the classic version of sofrito, a slow-cooked mix of onion, garlic, olive oil, and tomato. In Valencia, green peppers are common for sofrito paella.
Catalan Sofregit is the oldest documented sofrito style, which usually has onion, leek, garlic, pork fat, then later tomato and peppers, after the Columbian Exchange.
Italian Soffritto usually has onion, carrot, and celery, which are cooked in olive oil or butter. Northern versions avoid garlic and tomato entirely. The mix is called battuto before it is cooked; soffritto once heat comes into the picture.
Portuguese Refogado generally has onion, garlic, olive oil, and sometimes tomato. It is the base for soups, rice, beans, and seafood stews.
Puerto Rican Sofrito or Recaito is distinctively green, built on culantro (recao), cilantro, ají dulce peppers, onion, garlic, and Cubanelle peppers. Tomatoes are often omitted.
Cuban Sofrito: Typically, onion, garlic, bell peppers, tomato, olive oil, oregano, and sometimes diced ham are featured.
Dominican Sofrito uses onion, garlic, peppers, oregano, cumin, cilantro or culantro, annatto, and occasionally vinegar.
Colombian Hogao is a sofrito cousin made with tomato, scallions, garlic, cumin, and onion, commonly spooned over beans, arepas, and meats.
Brazilian Refogado usually features onion, garlic, olive oil, and tomato cooked into a paste-like aromatic base for stews and beans.
Filipino Ginisa is a Spanish-influenced sauté base using garlic, onion, tomato, and sometimes ginger before adding meats or vegetables.
Shifting towards South Asian cuisine, or rather South East Asian Cuisine, comes China with their holy trinity of garlic, scallions (spring onion), and fresh ginger, which are minced and form the foundational flavour for many of their famous dishes like ginger chicken, fried rice and more. Regional cuisines are further built on these three aromatics, like Sichuan cuisine, which adds red hot chillies and Sichuan pepper. Traditional Chinese medicine also enlists these aromatics and spices’ benefits, like aiding digestion, improving blood flow and acting as a detoxifying agent.
4. French Mirepoix
The quiet backbone of classical French cooking, mirepoix has three ingredients which are treated as vegetables in other parts of the world. Mirepoix is made with onion, carrot, and celery cooked in butter or oil until soft, sweet, and aromatic. There is no browning involved here. Usually, a ratio of two parts onion to one part carrot and celery is used, and it forms the flavour base for stocks, soups, braises, sauces, and stews across French cuisine.
Thai cuisine seems like a spiritual reset among the sea of bland European cooking to the intense masala bases in our own country. A trio of fragrant ingredients builds many of its curries, soups, and stir-fries; these are lemongrass, galangal, and kaffir lime leaves. Together, they make a flavour base that is citrusy, piney, and peppery, associated with dishes like tom yum soup and Thai green curry.
Rather than beginning with sautéed vegetables or spices, Japanese cuisine starts with dashi, which hinges on something unique – a umami-rich stock made by steeping kombu seaweed and katsuobushi bonito flakes in water.
The combination of glutamates from kombu and inosinate from fermented fish creates a savouriness that underpins miso soup, ramen, simmered dishes, sauces, and noodle broths. Variations may use shiitake mushrooms, dried sardines, or kelp, but the philosophy of adding depth to dishes via infusion rather than frying remains the same.
Korean cooking foundations layer pungent fresh aromatics, which focus on adding depth to dishes by using fermented products and a mix of garlic, ginger, scallions, sesame oil, gochujang, doenjang, or ganjang.
Instead of one fixed aromatic base, Korean cuisine builds flavour in stages, balancing heat, funk, sweetness, and umami through fermentation and blooming aromatics in oil or broth. This creates the typical savoury intensity found in kimchi jjigae, bulgogi marinades, bibimbap sauces, and countless banchan preparations.
Every cuisine has something that might not be obvious to those unfamiliar with a country’s local cuisine. Bhuna masala is a complex blend of spices and aromatics like onions, tomatoes, ginger-garlic paste and more, with subtler cuisines like the French, fixating on a trio of carrots, onions and celery. Though drastically different, it forms the base of their respective hyperlocal cuisine and lend incomparable flavour complexity to the dishes that use them.
A: Aromatics are usually fresh ingredients like onion, garlic, ginger, or celery cooked to build flavour, while spices are dried seeds, bark, roots, or pods added for seasoning.
