Our Story
A pinch of memory, a world of spice.
Miss Masala began with one woman, a battered notebook, and a question that wouldn't go away — why does a spice taste so different a thousand miles from where it grew? The answer took her across South Asia. What she brought back is on our shelves today.
How it began
A kitchen in Birmingham, a memory of Lahore
Miss Masala was born in 2019, in a modest kitchen in Birmingham. Mrs Hibah Ahmad — a professional South Asian cuisine consultant by trade — had spent years cooking for clients, writing menus and training chefs. But every time she opened a jar of supermarket cumin or shop-bought garam masala, something was missing. The colour was duller. The aroma left the room before the dish reached the table.
She knew exactly what that "something" was. She'd grown up with it — chili that smelled of Kashmiri sunlight, cardamom you could feel in your chest, rice you could identify blindfolded. So she packed a notebook and a small set of glass jars, and started travelling to find it again.
The journey
Six countries, four years, one notebook
Between 2019 and 2023, Hibah travelled across Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal — sleeping in farm guesthouses, sitting in on harvests, drinking endless cups of chai with growers who'd been doing this for generations.
Cherry-picked at source
Every spice we sell was tasted, smelled and sampled by Hibah herself before a single contract was signed. No middlemen. No commodity blends. No anonymous bulk lots.
Fair-price contracts
We sign 12-month fixed-price contracts directly with cooperatives and family mills. Growers know what they're earning before the seed goes in the ground.
Sun-dried, never irradiated
We use steam sterilisation, not gamma irradiation, so the volatile oils that give a spice its soul actually survive the journey to your kitchen.
Meet the founder
Mrs Hibah Ahmad
Founder & Chief Executive, Miss Masala
Hibah is a professional South Asian cuisine expert with two decades of experience in restaurant consulting, menu development and culinary training. Trained in the regional kitchens of Punjab, Sindh and the Deccan, she has worked alongside chefs across the UK and South Asia to develop authentic, restaurant-grade recipes that respect the ingredients they come from.
Miss Masala is the natural extension of that life's work. After years of struggling to find spices in the UK that matched the depth and brightness she remembered from her travels, she decided to build the supply chain herself — sourcing directly, paying fairly, and offering it to British home cooks and chefs at honest, affordable prices.
"I don't want anyone to settle for a tired curry powder ever again," she says. "Good food starts with good spice. That's the whole brand in one sentence."
- 20+ years in South Asian cuisine
- Trained in Lahore, Delhi & Hyderabad
- Former chef-consultant, UK fine dining
- Direct relationships in 6 countries
"We don't sell spice. We sell the work of the farmer who grew it, the miller who cleaned it, and the family that's been doing this for four generations. Our job is just to bring it to you honestly."
— Mrs Hibah Ahmad, Founder
Our promise
Finest quality. Honest prices. Real provenance.
Every jar carries a country, a region, a harvest year and a lot number. If we can't tell you where it came from, we don't sell it.