Moroccan soups and main courses

The most common main course in Morocco deserves an individual article – tajine. Another one favorite Moroccan dish is couscous. Also there are Moroccan fast foods that serve baguette sandwiches and something like the meal on the 1st picture.

Harira

Tomato soup with lentils, chickpea and meat broth. It is served in many restaurants as a compliment dish when you have ordered a main course. Also harira is one of traditional dishes that are consumed during Ramadan.

As it comes with the most popular dishes – recipes may vary. Harira can be made of beef, lamb, chicken or without meat (a vegetarian version). Soup may be either nourishing or lean, either spicy or no.

Chorba

Vegetable soup with meat broth and chaariya (angel’s hair pasta). A kind of Italian minestrone. Vegetables for chorba are cut in cubes.

Kefta

Small grilled patties of any ground meat (except offal). They can be served like on the picture below or on skewers. Tajine kefta usually means tajine mkaoura (a tajine with meatballs in tomato sauce – recipe). But there are many varieties too, f.e. kefta tagine with saffron-lemon sauce – recipe.

Loubia

Stewed white beans, sometimes with meat.

Rfissa

Stewed chicken with lentils served on rghayef (msemen) pancakes.

Merguez

Sausages made of fresh lamb or beef with a big amount of cumin, garlic, fennel, sumac, chili (or harissa). Usually they are grilled. Sometimes they are dried. Dry merguez may be added to tagine.

Mechoui

(meshwi)

Charcoal spit-roasted sheep (ras el hanout spice mix is used for it). This dish is especially popular on the south of Morocco and in rural Berber areas. Citizens tend to simplify the process of cooking and take only a part of lamb. For spit-roasting they use a ferran (a special public oven).

Charcoal grilled meat

As I was telling in some other articles, in Morocco there are restaurants that include a butcher shop. Any peace of raw meat that you will choose, will be immediately grilled for you.

Qaddid

(kaddid, gueddid)

Sun dried meat (veal, lamb, camel or turkey). Qaddid is usually added to a dish to bring some special taste and flavor.

Khlii

(khlea)

Confit style cooked qaddid – it means that qaddid was stewed in oil (olive oil or its mixture with liquid fat) at low temperature (<100°C). This method makes possible to store khlii at room temperature up to 2 years.

Mqila

Express khlii. Fresh meat is marinated with ground coriander and a big amount of garlic. Then it is cooked confit style. Mqila should be served hot. It can also play a role of appetizer. Mqila is a high-calorie dish. Sometimes oil-fat mixture that was used for cooking is put to a freezer. It can be used later f.e. for frying potatoes.

Chermoula meat

Marinated in chermoula grilled meat or fried with chermoula meat. A big variety of recipes. It’s better to check description of chermoula to get closer to understanding.

Seafood

Moroccans like both – fish and shellfish. The closer you come to the coast the wider is the variety. Seafood in Morocco can be grilled, fried, cooked tajine-style and put in pastilla pies.

Morocco is one of the largest exporters of sardines. You will easily find them in menus: fried sardines with lemon, fishballs made of them (cooked like tajine mkaoura), couscous with sardines etc.