- Meat (chicken, lamb, beef or fish), or vegetables alone
- Preserved lemons, olives, prunes, apricots or quince, depending on the version
- Ras el hanout, ginger, turmeric, cumin, paprika, coriander and parsley
- Onions, garlic and olive oil; argan oil in the Souss
Tagine
Chicken tagine with preserved lemon and olives. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.
Tagine is both the dish and the pot: a conical clay vessel in which meat, vegetables and spices slow-cook over embers until everything surrenders into a fragrant sauce. The cone traps the steam and rains it back down, which is why the meat stays tender with so little water.
The combinations are endless: chicken with preserved lemon and olives, lamb with prunes and almonds, kefta with tomato and egg, and fish tagines along the coast. Bread is the utensil; the meal is eaten communally from the pot it cooked in.
Key ingredients
Where to try it
- Every restaurant in the country; the daily workers' lunch everywhere.
- Marrakech's Mechoui Alley for the grilled-meat end of the spectrum.
- Essaouira and coastal towns for fish tagine.