10 Traditional Moroccan Dishes You Need to Try

Moroccan cooking is wide enough that a first encounter can be confusing. Tagines and couscous get most of the attention abroad, but the everyday repertoire is much larger and a great deal of it is vegetable-based, quick and inexpensive. These are the ten dishes that give you the clearest map of it.

1. Chicken tagine with preserved lemon and olives

The dish most people mean when they say tagine. Chicken cooks slowly in a saffron and ginger sauce until the onions collapse into it, and preserved lemon and green olives are added near the end to cut the richness. It is the single best introduction to Moroccan cooking because the method is almost entirely hands-off.

2. Couscous with seven vegetables

Friday food. The grain is steamed over the broth it will be served with, three times, until every grain stands separate. Vegetables and meat are piled on top and the whole platter is shared. It is the most technically demanding dish on this list and the one most worth learning properly.

3. Harira

Tomato, lentil and chickpea soup thickened with a flour and water slurry called tedouira. It breaks the fast at sunset during Ramadan and turns up on cold evenings the rest of the year. Make a large pot; it improves overnight.

4. Pastilla

A pie of spiced chicken, set egg and cinnamon almonds in crisp pastry, dusted with icing sugar. It sounds improbable in description and makes complete sense at the first bite. This is the dish Moroccans make when they want to impress someone.

5. Zaalouk

Aubergine and tomato cooked down with garlic, cumin and paprika until jammy. One of a family of cooked salads served in small dishes at the start of a meal, and probably the most useful recipe on this page for everyday cooking.

6. Mechoui

Whole lamb or shoulder rubbed with cumin, garlic and butter and roasted slowly until it pulls apart. Traditionally cooked in a pit; a low oven does a respectable job. Served with nothing more than salt and cumin on the side.

7. Rfissa

Shredded msemen or day-old bread soaked in a fenugreek and ras el hanout broth, topped with chicken and lentils. It is traditionally served to new mothers and it tastes exactly like something designed to restore someone.

8. Kefta and tomato tagine

Spiced beef meatballs simmered in a cumin-heavy tomato sauce with eggs cracked in at the end. Twenty-five minutes, one pan, and a dish every Moroccan child recognises.

9. Msemen

Folded, pan-fried flatbread with distinct layers, eaten hot with honey and butter for breakfast. It requires a technique rather than an ingredient list, and it is well worth the three attempts it takes to learn.

10. Mint tea

Not a dish, but no Moroccan meal ends without it. Gunpowder green tea with a large bunch of spearmint and considerably more sugar than you expect, poured from a height to raise a head of foam.

Where to start

If you are cooking your first Moroccan meal, make zaalouk and a chicken tagine, buy bread rather than making it, and finish with mint tea. That is a complete, coherent table and nothing in it requires special equipment beyond a pot with a good lid.