- Whole lamb (or shoulder and leg)
- Salt, cumin and a little butter
- Wood fire or a baker's oven; time (several hours)
Mechoui
Barbecued lamb served in Marrakech. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.
Mechoui is whole lamb roasted in a pit oven (or a bakery oven) until the meat falls off the bone: the centerpiece of weddings, circumcisions and feast days. In the cities it has moved into dedicated mechoui restaurants, where the lamb roasts in wood-fired ovens all day.
It is eaten simply: pulled meat, cumin and salt, bread, and nothing else needed. The shoulder is the prized cut.
Key ingredients
Where to try it
- Marrakech's Mechoui Alley, off Jemaa el-Fnaa: the famous row of pit ovens.
- Meknès and Fès souk grill streets.
- Weddings and feast days anywhere in the country.