It’s now very easy to find Moroccan ingredients in your
Moroccan cuisine is especially famous for its tagines, slow-cooked stews made from lamb, beef, chicken or vegetables, flavoured with fragrant spices and served with couscous, tiny ‘grains’ made from wheat semolina.
Characteristic flavourings in Moroccan cooking include fragrant spices and spice mixtures, such as ras-el-hanout, and flavourings such as preserved lemons (with their distinctive sour tang) and perfumed rose and orange blossom water.
It’s now very easy to find Moroccan ingredients in your local supermarket. Here are a few of my favourites below for you to look out for. Try my quick and easy Moroccan-style Red Mullet for a taste of this delicious cuisine.
Couscous:
Made from semolina, this is a staple food in North Africa and has a delicate flavour and light, fluffy texture. Preparing couscous is very easy as it simply needs moistening and steaming. It’s classically served with tagines to soak up the dish’s tasty broth.
Cumin powder:
Made from ground cumin seeds, this aromatic spice is widely used in Moroccan cookery.
Harissa:
A hot, spicy chilli sauce, served as an accompaniment with dishes such as tagines.
Ras-el-hanout:
A mixture of many spices such as cardamom, cinnamon, cumin and nutmeg, and used as a flavouring in several dishes. There are many, many different recipes for ras-el-hanout; you can make your own mixture or use commercially available ready-mixed ones.
Saffron:
Famously the most expensive spice in the world, made from the dried stamens of the saffron crocus, saffron adds a distinctive flavour and yellow colour to dishes such as tagines.
