A practical guide to Morocco's national dishes
Moroccan cuisine centers on a handful of dishes you'll see everywhere: tagine, couscous, and mint tea, each carrying its own history and etiquette.
This guide covers what's actually in these dishes, when they're traditionally eaten, and a few table-manners basics that make meals with a host family or a home-cooked lunch go smoothly. Food is a real part of several of our tours — the 7-day Imperial Heritage Tour and 10-day Jewish Heritage tour both build in real food experiences along the way.
A slow-cooked stew named after its conical clay pot, which traps steam to keep meat tender.
Steamed semolina wheat granules, traditionally eaten on Fridays after mosque prayers.
A Marrakech specialty — beef or lamb slow-cooked in a sealed clay urn buried in a hammam furnace's ashes.
A Fes specialty — a sweet-and-savory pie of thin pastry layered with pigeon or chicken, almonds, sugar, and cinnamon.
A rich soup of tomatoes, lentils, chickpeas, and herbs — traditionally used to break the fast during Ramadan.
A spread of roasted almonds, honey, and argan oil, often called "Moroccan Nutella."
A tagine is a slow-cooked stew named after the conical clay pot it's cooked in, whose shape traps steam to keep meat tender in dry climates — it's not the same as a tanjia, a Marrakech specialty of beef or lamb slow-cooked in a sealed clay urn buried in the ashes of a hammam furnace.
Couscous — steamed semolina wheat granules — is traditionally eaten on Fridays after mosque prayers, making it the one dish most likely to appear on a Friday lunch menu specifically.
Atay, Moroccan mint tea, is gunpowder green tea brewed with fresh mint and a generous amount of sugar, and functions as a symbol of hospitality — refusing a glass when offered can come across as impolite.
Bread, or khobz, is served with every meal and doubles as a utensil for scooping up tagine, so don't expect a fork by default at a home-style meal.
Pastilla is a Fes specialty — a sweet-and-savory pie of thin pastry (warka) layered with pigeon or chicken, almonds, sugar, and cinnamon.
Ras el hanout, meaning "head of the shop," is a complex spice blend of 20 to 30 different spices, representing the best a spice merchant has to offer.
Harira is a rich soup of tomatoes, lentils, chickpeas, and herbs, traditionally used to break the fast during Ramadan.