Moroccan food: a journey through flavour, tradition and culinary art

Moroccan food is cooked slowly and shared generously, and it’s rarely written down. Recipes pass from mother to daughter, from one riad kitchen to the next, and change from valley to valley. You don’t really eat in Morocco so much as get fed. Here’s what to look for at the table.

The tagine: a dish named after its pot

A tagine is both the dish and the conical earthenware pot it cooks in. The tall lid traps steam and sends it back down, so meat and vegetables braise for hours in their own juices over low coals.

The classics are worth seeking out. Chicken with preserved lemon and green olives is sharp, salty and fragrant. Lamb with prunes and toasted almonds is sweet and rich, a dish for celebrations. Kefta, spiced meatballs in tomato sauce, is finished with an egg cracked on top. In the south, look for vegetable tagines heaped like small mountains, with every vegetable from the market arranged in a cone.

A tagine is not fast food. If one arrives five minutes after you ordered it, it was cooked for somebody else.

Friday is couscous day

Couscous is the national dish, and families traditionally eat it at lunch on Fridays after the midday prayer. The fine semolina is steamed two or three times over a simmering stew, then piled high and crowned with seven vegetables and tender meat. In the desert you may be served couscous with camel, or a version sweetened with raisins and caramelised onions called tfaya.

Pastilla, tanjia and medfouna

Pastilla, a speciality of Fes, is the dish that surprises visitors most. Layers of paper-thin warqa pastry enclose spiced chicken (traditionally pigeon), almonds and egg, and the whole pie is dusted with icing sugar and cinnamon. It’s both savoury and sweet, and you won’t forget it.

Tanjia is the bachelor’s dish of Marrakech. Beef or lamb is sealed in a clay urn with preserved lemon, cumin and saffron, then left to cook all day in the embers of the hammam’s fires.

In the oasis towns around Rissani and Erfoud, ask for medfouna, often called Berber pizza. It’s a round loaf stuffed with spiced meat, onions and eggs, baked until the crust is crisp.

Breakfast and the street

Morning starts with msemen, flaky square pancakes, and baghrir, the “thousand-hole” semolina crêpe, both soaked in honey and butter. Amlou, a paste of argan oil, roasted almonds and honey, is worth tracking down at breakfast. During Ramadan, the fast is broken at sunset with harira, a tomato, lentil and chickpea soup, along with dates and sticky chebakia pastries.

On the street, try snail broth in Jemaa el-Fnaa, grilled sardines at the port in Essaouira, and freshly squeezed orange juice almost anywhere.

Spice, and the art of balance

Moroccan cooking is fragrant rather than fiery. Ras el hanout, literally “head of the shop”, is each spice merchant’s signature blend, and it can contain more than twenty spices. Cumin, ginger, saffron, cinnamon and paprika do most of the work, and a dish is often finished with fresh coriander and flat-leaf parsley. If you want heat, ask for harissa on the side.

Mint tea, poured from height

Tea is hospitality made visible. Green gunpowder tea is brewed with a fistful of fresh mint and a generous amount of sugar, then poured from as high as the host can manage, which aerates it and raises a crown of foam. Refusing a glass is impolite, while accepting three is traditional: the first is said to be gentle as life, the second strong as love and the third bitter as death.

Eating well on your journey

On our tours, breakfasts are included every day and dinners on travel days and desert nights, usually tagines, couscous and salads in riads and camps where the cooking is homemade. Lunches are free, so you can stop wherever the smell from a roadside grill tempts you. Your driver-guide knows the best ones.

If you’re vegetarian or vegan, or have an allergy, let us know when you request your quote. Moroccan kitchens are wonderfully accommodating, and we’ll make sure every one of them knows in advance.