Moroccan cuisine is celebrated as one of the most exquisite and flavorful globally. Morocco is a great travel destination because it has so many things to offer and experiences to try, and one of the best things to do in Morocco is to try Moroccan street food. Unlike some destinations with limited culinary specialties, Morocco boasts a wealth of diverse dishes.
Moroccan culinary traditions are deeply embedded in the country’s regional and cultural diversity, with each area offering its own specialties and variations on national dishes. The cuisine also reflects Morocco’s historical role as a crossroads of civilizations, with Jewish, Moorish, and Ottoman influences layered into local culinary traditions. Dishes typically balance sweet and savory components, as seen in tagines and pastilla. Staple ingredients include couscous, olives, preserved lemons, and an array of seasonal vegetables and meats, especially lamb and chicken.
Most Moroccan families cook traditional Moroccan food every day, and restaurants and street food options cater to their needs. It’s very rare to be disappointed in a Moroccan street food offer, especially if you stick with merchants who sell to locals too. My advice is to be as curious as possible and give it a try. I’m sure your palate will enjoy the experience!
Set out for a culinary journey beautifully aromatic with exquisite and rare flavours! You can spend your whole trip trying new dishes, and you might not even be able to try them all.
How to Make a Tagine with Chef Mourad Lahlou | Williams-Sonoma
Main Dishes
Amongst the most sought-after dishes in Morocco is Tajine. A tagine is the clay cooking pot with a conical lid that gives its name to a myriad of dishes. Tagines can be seen bubbling away at every roadside café, are found in top notch restaurants and in every home, and are always served with bread. Lamb is the most commonly eaten meat in Morocco, usually eaten in a tagine with a wide selection of vegetables. Chicken is also very commonly used in tagines or roasted. They also use additional ingredients such as plums, boiled eggs, and lemon.
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Steming from the Amazigh tradition, couscous is a staple dish of Morocco! “Seksu” or couscous is a fine wheat pasta traditionally rolled by hand. It is steamed over a stew of meat and vegetables. To serve, the meat is covered by a pyramid of couscous, the vegetables are pressed into the sides and the sauce served separately. It is often garnished with a sweet raisin preserve, or in the Berber tradition, with a bowl of buttermilk.
Also known as "Trid", the R’fissa originates in Casablanca. A mixture between pulses, tomatoes, pasta and flour. The R’fissa originates in Casablanca, Morocco.
With its long Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, Morocco boasts a rich array of fish dishes. Chermoula is a combination of herbs and spices used as a marinade before grilling over coals, and as a dipping sauce. Coastal cities favor seafood, while interior regions emphasize hearty stews and grilled meats.
A typical lunch begins with a series of hot and cold salads, followed by a tagine or dwaz. Often, for a formal meal, a lamb or chicken dish is next, or couscous topped with meat and vegetables. Moroccan cuisine has ample seafood dishes.
Street Food
Selling fast food in the street has long been a tradition, and the best example is Djemaa el Fna square in Marrakech. Moroccan street food is legendary and the best place to sample the wide variety is Djemaa el-Fna square in Marrakech.
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These are Moroccan street food options that you can find in the streets of Morocco. They are food and dishes that can be enjoyed on the go, are easy to carry, and are quite filling.
Djemaa el-Fna Food Stalls
- Hammas Kamoun: Hammas kamoun means literally in Moroccan dialect ‘chickpeas with cumin’. And this is what it is: well-cooked chickpeas seasoned with salt and cumin. Another variant is made with fava beans. Cumin also helps for a better digestion of chickpeas. This is a delicious and nutritious snack that will keep you full until your next Moroccan meal.
- Sugar-Coated Peanuts: This is a sweet snack Moroccans love! It is made with whole peanuts roasted with sugar, which creates very crispy and delicious peanuts.
- Moroccan Harcha: Harcha, or Harsha, is a popular Moroccan pastry made with semolina. Moroccans love to eat it with traditional Moroccan mint tea or whenever they feel a little bit hungry on the road. Unlike most Moroccan pastries, Harcha is not sweet and is very yummy with honey and cheese, especially with fresh goat cheese or the locals’ favorite cheese brand, La Vache Qui Rit.
- Sugar Cane Juice: This Moroccan street food is available in most Moroccan markets, or Medinas. Morocco is a big producer of sugar cane, so it is no surprise that you will find many vendors offering Moroccan cane sugar juice. The juice is sweet and very energizing and will fuel you for your visit.
- Zitoun (Moroccan Olives): Moroccan olives are essential in Moroccan cuisine and a favorite as a street food. They are multicolor and have different flavors, and you can find them nearly anywhere in Morocco. Moroccan olives are used in traditional Moroccan dishes like tajines, they are served as a side dish to complement menus, but are also enjoyed as a snack in the street.
- Sfenj (Moroccan Donuts): Sfenj is the Moroccan version of American donuts. It is a donut made with white flour-based dough, fried, and served either naturally or topped with sugar. Chfanj is a popular Moroccan street food enjoyed as a snack, alone or with Moroccan mint tea.
- Hendia (Prickly Pears): Hendia is a fruit that is a very popular street food in Morocco. If you are in the right season - from late summer through early winter -, you can find vendors with their traditional food trucks full of prickly pears.
- Ghlal (Moroccan Snails): Moroccan snails, Ghlal, are one of Morocco’s most surprising street food for tourists, as in many countries, snails are never used for cooking. In Morocco, snails are a popular dish, and they are very cheap and affordable. The snails are cooked in a broth with special spices and herbs.
- Raib (Moroccan Yogurt): Raib, or Moroccan yogurt, is another popular Moroccan street food. It’s naturally rich probiotics yogurt, similar to Kefir. You can have it natural with no sugar, in which case it can be slightly acidic. Or you can order it sweet and with different flavors.
Soups and Salads
Harira, a typical heavy soup, is eaten during winter to warm up and is usually served for dinner. During the holy month of Ramadan, the fast is broken at sunset each day with a steaming bowl of harira soup. Rich with tomatoes, lentils, chickpeas and lamb, it is finished off with a squeeze of lemon juice and some chopped coriander, and served with a sticky sweet pretzel called chebakkiya. It is typically eaten with plain bread or with dates during the month of Ramadan.
Moroccan meals begin with at least seven cooked vegetable salads to scoop up with bread. They can include green peppers and tomatoes, sweet carrots or courgette purée, and a dish of local olives alongside. Zaalouk is a smoked aubergine dip, seasoned with garlic, paprika, cumin and a little chilli powder. Zaalouk is an eggplant puree.
Bread and Dairy
A big part of the daily meal is bread. Bread in Morocco is principally made from durum wheat semolina known as khobz. Bakeries are very common throughout Morocco and fresh bread is a staple in every city, town, and village. The most common is whole-grain coarse ground or white-flour bread or baguettes.
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Dairy product shops locally called mhlaba (محْلَبة), are very prevalent all around the country. In Morocco, goat's cheese is mostly consumed.
Desserts and Drinks
Usually, seasonal fruits rather than cooked desserts are served at the close of a meal. A common dessert is kaab el ghzal (كعب الغزال, gazelle ankles), a pastry stuffed with almond paste and topped with sugar. Another is halwa chebakia, pretzel-shaped dough deep-fried, soaked in honey and sprinkled with sesame seeds; it is eaten during the month of Ramadan.
I can confidently say that the Mille Feuille pastry is the most loved and famous pastry in Morocco. Mille-feuilles is originally a French pastry, meaning in French ‘thousand layers’ as it is made with pâte feuilletée (puff pastry). However, Moroccans have appropriated this pastry and love it more than most French people.
The most popular drink is Moroccan mint tea, locally called atay. Traditionally, making good mint tea in Morocco is considered an art form and the drinking of it with friends and family is often a daily tradition. This thirst-quenching tea is served in a small, colourful glass. The pouring technique is as crucial as the quality of the tea itself. Moroccan tea pots have long, curved pouring spouts and this allows the tea to be poured evenly into tiny glasses from a height. For the best taste, glasses are filled in two stages. The Moroccans traditionally like tea with bubbles, so while pouring they hold the teapot high above the glasses.
