Lebanon recipes
Recipes from Lebanon: home cooking with cultural background, ingredient substitutes and step-by-step instructions.
Baba Ghanoush: Lebanese Smoky Roasted Eggplant Mezze
How to make baba ghanoush, the Lebanese roasted-eggplant mezze. Why the skin is charred, the tahini-to-lemon balance, draining to avoid a watery dip, regional names, finishing with sumac and pomegranate, what to serve alongside, and refrigerator storage.
Balila: Lebanese Warm Chickpeas with Garlic, Lemon, and Cumin
Balila is a warm Lebanese breakfast of tender chickpeas dressed with garlic, lemon, and cumin. Covers dried versus canned chickpeas, mashing to keep a coarse texture, how it differs from the street food of Hejaz, when tahini and sumac are worth buying, and storage and menu ideas.
Falafel: Crisp Outside, Fluffy Inside
A recipe for re-creating the Middle Eastern street food falafel properly at home. The secret to a crisp outside and fluffy inside with dried chickpeas, frying tips so it doesn't fall apart in the oil, how to make tahini sauce and how to serve it in pita, explained clearly with the insights of professional chefs.
Freekeh Soup: Lebanese Chicken and Roasted Green Wheat Soup
A home-style Lebanese freekeh soup with chicken: cracked freekeh, chicken breast, and onion simmered gently with allspice and cinnamon. Covers rinsing and soaking, the heat that leaves broth around the grains, checking the chicken's center temperature, fixes for hard grains and a reduced broth, storage, and variations.
Hummus: Lebanese Breakfast and Meze, Made Silky Smooth
A recipe for Lebanese hummus made silky with dried chickpeas and tahini. Covers how it is eaten at breakfast and meze, regional differences, why chickpeas are cooked with baking soda, lemon and garlic, using ice water, canned-bean substitutes, storage and sesame cautions, ingredient choices, how to recover from failures, and plating.
How to Store Hummus: Refrigerating, Freezing and Knowing When to Finish It
How to store hummus at home, from refrigerating to freezing and thawing. How long homemade hummus keeps, how to tell it has spoiled, portioning containers, the olive oil film, restoring it after thawing, using leftovers in toast, sandwiches and soup, and cautions for potlucks, with food-safety references.
Kibbeh bil Sanieh: Lebanese Baked Kibbeh in a Tray
How to make kibbeh bil sanieh, Lebanon's baked kibbeh. Fine bulgur and lean beef are layered around a pine-nut filling and baked in diamonds, with a shaping method that resists cracking, substitutions, mezze sides, storage, shopping decisions, and how to recover when something goes wrong.
Knafeh Recipe: The Levantine Cheese Pastry
Knafeh, the cheese pastry of the Levant, recreated for a home kitchen: frozen kataifi dough, mozzarella and ricotta in place of Nabulsi cheese, a scented syrup, baking at 180 degrees C, storage, common failures, how it is eaten locally, and what to buy, in enough detail for a first attempt.
Layali Lubnan (ليالي لبنان): Lebanon's Chilled Semolina and Ashta Dessert
Layali Lubnan is a Lebanese chilled dessert of flower-scented semolina milk pudding topped with white ashta cream and pistachios. A step-by-step guide with photos: the heat for keeping the two layers distinct, chilling time, adjusting sweetness, regional and family variations, and storage.
Maamoul: Lebanese Semolina Cookies Filled with Dates
Maamoul, the filled semolina cookies made for feasts in Lebanon and the Levant, with a date filling. Orange blossom water, how to wrap the filling, browning, date, walnut and pistachio fillings, substitutes, storage, and quantities that work without a mold.
Meghli: Lebanese Spiced Rice Pudding Served to Celebrate a Birth
Meghli is a Lebanese rice-flour pudding served in small bowls to celebrate a newborn. Made without milk or eggs, scented with caraway and cinnamon, and topped with nuts and coconut. Which rice flour and spices to choose, the cold-water mixing order, how to judge thickness and chilling time, household variations, fixing lumps and scorching, and storage, with step photos.
Moghrabieh: Lebanese Pearl Couscous with Chicken, Chickpeas and Caraway
Moghrabieh is a Lebanese dish of large wheat pearls soaked in chicken broth, scented with caraway and cinnamon. Ingredient table and step photos, how it differs from fine couscous, choosing ingredients, serving the broth separately, a drier Tripoli home version, fixes for hard pearls or too much absorbed broth, storage and reheating.
Mujaddara: Lentil and Rice Pilaf from the Middle East
How to make mujaddara, the humble Middle Eastern home dish: brown lentils and basmati rice cooked with cumin and cinnamon and topped with plenty of crisp fried onions, with tips for the onions, regional versions, nutrition, and how to pair it with yogurt.
Chickpea Fatteh: The Levantine Breakfast of Pita, Chickpeas and Garlic Yogurt
A Levantine breakfast, fatteh, made with chickpeas, pita, yogurt and tahini. Differences between the tables of Lebanon, Jordan and Damascus, how to layer without losing the crunch of the bread, substitutes, how to toast pine nuts without scorching, fixes when it goes wrong, and storage.
Fried Kibbeh Recipe: Lebanese Bulgur Shells Filled With Spiced Meat and Pine Nuts
A home recipe for Lebanon's fried kibbeh: fine bulgur worked with lean meat into a thin shell, filled with onion, meat, pine nuts and warm spices, chilled and fried at around 170°C. Covers why shells crack, oil temperature, freezing and a mezze table.
Maghmour: Lebanese Eggplant and Chickpea Stew
Maghmour is a Lebanese stew of eggplant and chickpeas in a garlicky tomato sauce. A serves-4 recipe that roasts the eggplant first, with the local table of scooping it up with bread, how it differs from Greek moussaka, choosing chickpeas, dried mint, fixing mushy or watery stew, and refrigerator storage.
Samkeh Harra: Lebanese White Fish with Spicy Tahini Sauce
Samkeh harra is a Lebanese dish of baked white fish under a lemony, garlicky, spicy sesame sauce. Learn about the Tripoli celebration platter and the pita sandwich, plus tahini versus sesame paste, oven timing and temperature, sauce consistency, pine nuts, herb swaps and storage.
Lebanese Chicken Shawarma: Spiced Chicken Wraps with Toum Garlic Sauce
A detailed home recipe for Lebanese chicken shawarma: a yogurt-and-spice marinade, oven roasting with a pan finish, and toum, the egg-free Lebanese garlic sauce. Plus the history of the vertical spit and how shawarma differs from doner and gyros.
Tabbouleh: Lebanese Parsley Salad with Mint and Bulgur
A Lebanese tabbouleh recipe that puts parsley and mint first: soaking fine bulgur in lemon juice, cutting tomatoes to limit their juice, the meze tradition of scooping it with lettuce, substitutes, regional differences, storage and wheat-allergy notes.