Moroccan Main Dishes

The centrepiece dishes of the Moroccan table — tagines, couscous, roasts and pastilla.

5 recipes

Moroccan main dishes served together on a patterned table

Moroccan vegetable tagine with carrots, courgette, chickpeas and apricots arranged in a cone

Moroccan Vegetable Tagine with Chickpeas

Root vegetables, chickpeas and apricots layered in a tagine with ginger, turmeric and preserved lemon, cooked until the sauce thickens around them.

80 minEasy

Moroccan beef tagine with glossy prunes, toasted almonds and sesame seeds

Moroccan Tagines

Beef Tagine with Prunes and Almonds

Beef slow-cooked with cinnamon and saffron until tender, finished with honeyed prunes, toasted almonds and sesame seeds.

190 minMedium

Round Moroccan chicken pastilla dusted with icing sugar and cinnamon lines

Main Dishes

Chicken Pastilla — Moroccan Sweet and Savoury Pie

Spiced shredded chicken, almond and egg wrapped in thin warqa pastry, baked until crisp and dusted with icing sugar and cinnamon.

135 minHard

Couscous

Traditional Moroccan Couscous with Seven Vegetables

Semolina steamed three times over a saffron broth and served under a mound of carrots, turnips, pumpkin, courgette and chickpeas.

160 minMedium

Moroccan chicken tagine with preserved lemon slices and green olives in a clay dish

Moroccan Tagines

Moroccan Chicken Tagine with Preserved Lemon and Olives

Chicken slow-cooked with saffron, ginger, preserved lemon and green olives until the sauce turns golden and thick enough to scoop with bread.

95 minEasy

About main dishes

If you are cooking one Moroccan dish for a table of people, it will almost certainly come from this section. These are the plats de résistance: tagines that simmer for an afternoon, couscous steamed over its own broth, pastilla layered with pastry and almonds.

Most of them scale generously and several are better made a day ahead, which makes them well suited to hosting.

Each recipe notes where you can shorten the method without losing the character of the dish.