Moroccan Ramadan Foods: What Is on the Iftar Table

The Moroccan iftar table is unusually consistent from one household to the next. Whatever else changes, the same core appears at sunset across the country: dates, harira, chebakia, hard-boiled eggs and something fried.

What is on the table

Dates and milk

The fast is broken with dates and a glass of milk or buttermilk before anything else, following prophetic tradition. Everything else follows a few minutes later.

Harira

The tomato, lentil and chickpea soup thickened with a flour tedouira. It is the centre of the table and the reason most Moroccan households have a very large pot.

Chebakia

Sesame and honey rosettes, made by the kilo in the week before Ramadan begins and eaten alongside the soup rather than after it. The sweetness against the savoury soup is the point.

Msemen, harcha and batbout

Breads are made fresh or reheated from the freezer, served with honey, butter, cheese and jam. Batbout are often split and stuffed with kefta or tuna.

Briouat and other fried things

Savoury pastry parcels with chicken, meat or cheese; sometimes sardine balls or potato maakouda.

Eggs, olives and cheese

Hard-boiled eggs with cumin and salt on the side are near-universal, alongside olives and soft white cheese.

Sellou

A dense, unbaked mixture of toasted flour, almonds, sesame, honey and butter, eaten by the spoonful. Very high in energy, which is precisely why it exists.

Juices

Avocado, almond, orange and date milkshakes, made thick. Mint tea comes later in the evening.

A make-ahead plan

Ramadan cooking is manageable if the work is front-loaded. The following schedule is close to what most Moroccan households actually do.

1. Two weeks before: make chebakia and store it in sealed tins. It keeps for a month and improves.
2. One week before: make sellou and keep it in a jar. Fold and freeze briouat raw on trays, then bag them.
3. The weekend before: cook and freeze a batch of msemen and batbout, stacked with baking paper.
4. Each weekend during the month: make a large pot of harira base without the tedouira and refrigerate or freeze in portions.
5. Each day: reheat the harira, add the tedouira fresh, fry briouat from frozen, reheat breads in a dry pan. Twenty minutes of work.

Suhoor

The pre-dawn meal is lighter and leans on things that release energy slowly: harcha or msemen with honey, sellou, dates, yoghurt, and plenty of water. Salty and heavily spiced food is generally avoided because of the thirst it causes during the day.