Healthy
Egyptian Koshari
Egypt's national street dish: layers of rice, lentils and pasta under a spiced tomato sauce, garlic vinegar and a…
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All 5555 recipes
Egyptian recipes
Street food built on lentils, rice and crisp onions. 47 Egyptian recipes, from the everyday to the ambitious.
The 47 recipes cover 8 of the site’s categories, among them 16 dinners, 12 appetisers and small plates, 6 desserts, 4 lunches, 3 bakes and 3 drinks. Of these, 9 are ready in 30 minutes or less, start to finish; the quickest are Asab (10 min), Egyptian Tahina (10 min) and Gebna Domiati Salad (15 min). For 19, the method times a wait such as rising, chilling or marinating, and the time at the top of the recipe includes it. By difficulty: 29 easy, 15 medium and 3 hard.
As written, 30 are vegetarian, 19 vegan, 16 gluten-free and 28 dairy-free. Another 10 meet a diet label only with a swap the recipe names, and the recipe says which.
Egyptian recipes — all 47 recipes
Dinner
Molokhia
Jute leaves cooked to a green, silky stew with garlic and coriander fried in ghee and stirred in at the last second…
Quick Meals
Ful Medames
Slow-cooked fava beans crushed with garlic, lemon, cumin and a great deal of olive oil — Egypt eats it for…
Appetizers
Ta'ameya
Egypt's falafel, and a genuinely different thing from the Levantine one: split broad beans rather than chickpeas, a…
Appetizers
Besara
Broad beans cooked to a purée with an enormous quantity of green herbs, poured out flat and topped with fried onion…
Lunch
Shorbet Ads
Red lentil soup finished with cumin, lemon and fried bread. The default first course at every Egyptian table in…
Appetizers
Salata Baladi
The chopped country salad that arrives with everything: tomato, cucumber, onion and pepper cut small, dressed with…
Appetizers
Egyptian Tahina
The Egyptian tahini sauce, thinner and sharper than the Levantine one, cut with vinegar as well as lemon and always…
Appetizers
Baba Ghanoug Masri
The Egyptian version, which is a salad rather than a purée: charred aubergine chopped rough and mixed with tomato…
Condiment
Torshi
The pink pickled turnips that come free with every plate of ta'ameya in Egypt. Beetroot does the colouring; the…
Appetizers
Betengan Mekhalel
Small aubergines boiled, stuffed with garlic, chilli and pepper, and kept under oil and vinegar. Sharper and hotter…
Appetizers
Batates Mohammara
Potatoes roasted hard with cumin, coriander and a lot of garlic until the edges go almost black. Sold from carts by…
Condiment
Dukkah
Toasted nuts, seeds and spices pounded to a dry rubble, eaten by dipping bread in oil and then in the dukkah. Every…
Dinner
Bamia Masreya
The Egyptian okra stew: smaller pods than the Levantine version, more tomato, and finished with a hit of fried…
Dinner
Torly
Vegetables cut large and roasted together in a tomato sauce until everything is soft enough to eat with a spoon…
Side dish
Roz Mermah
Egyptian rice, which is short-grain and cooked with broken vermicelli browned in butter first. The default starch…
Lunch
Kishk Masri
A thick soup of yogurt and flour cooked out slowly and poured over fried bread and onions. Sour, savoury and…
Dinner
Hawawshi
Flatbread stuffed with spiced minced beef and baked hard until the bread crisps and the fat soaks into it…
Dinner
Macarona Bechamel
Penne bound in béchamel over a layer of spiced mince, baked until the top sets into a sliceable crust. Egypt by way…
Dinner
Fattah
Layers of fried bread, rice and slow-cooked lamb under a sharp garlic and vinegar tomato sauce. The dish of Eid and…
Dinner
Mahshi Cromb
Cabbage leaves rolled thin around a herb-heavy rice filling with no meat in it, packed flat and cooked in tomato…
Dinner
Kofta Masreya
Minced beef and lamb on skewers with onion, parsley and a lot of black pepper, grilled hard over coals or under a…
Quick Meals
Kebda Eskandarani
Alexandrian liver: beef liver cut into strips and cooked in seconds with chilli, garlic and cumin. The whole dish…
Dinner
Sayadeya Masreya
The Egyptian fisherman’s rice: fish fried rather than poached, rice cooked in the frying oil and stock, and the…
Dinner
Hamam Mahshi
Pigeon stuffed with freekeh and roasted, the most special-occasion dish in the Egyptian repertoire. Small birds…
Dinner
Ferakh Mashwi
Chicken spatchcocked and grilled under a cumin, garlic and lemon paste until the skin blackens in patches. The…
Dinner
Mombar
Sausage casings filled with spiced rice and mince, boiled and then fried until they blister. Fiddly, cheap, and one…
Appetizers
Renga
Smoked herring flaked and dressed with lemon, oil and raw onion, eaten at Sham el-Nessim with spring onions and…
Dinner
Goulash Masri
Filo layered over spiced mince and baked in a tray, cut into squares. Nothing to do with Hungarian goulash — the…
Baking
Aish Baladi
The wholemeal country loaf, baked on a bed of bran at a ferocious heat so it puffs into a hollow disc. The bread the…
Bread
Eish Merahrah
A flat wholemeal loaf enriched with ground fenugreek and maize, from the villages of Upper Egypt. Bitter, nutty and…
Baking
Feteer Meshaltet
Layered pastry stretched paper-thin, folded with ghee over and over, and baked into something between a pancake and…
Appetizers
Gebna Domiati Salad
The soft white brined cheese of Damietta, cubed with tomato, cucumber and oil into a breakfast salad. Salty enough…
Appetizers
Batarekh
Grey mullet roe, salted and pressed and dried into a hard amber block, sliced paper-thin with oil and lemon. Egypt…
Desserts
Balah el Sham
Ridged fingers of choux fried rather than baked, dropped hot into cold syrup. The name means dates of Damascus…
Desserts
Om Ali
Torn pastry baked in sweetened milk with nuts and coconut until the top blisters and the bottom turns to custard…
Desserts
Roz bel Laban
Rice pudding cooked on the hob until it thickens by itself, with no eggs and no oven. Served cold in glasses with…
Desserts
Qatayef Mahshi
One-sided pancakes stuffed with nuts and cinnamon, pinched shut and fried, then dropped into syrup. The Ramadan…
Desserts
Zalabya
Yeasted batter dropped in spoonfuls into hot oil, fried into irregular golden balls and rolled in syrup or sugar…
Desserts
Kunafa bil Manga
Shredded kunafa pastry baked crisp and layered with cream and fresh mango. A modern Cairo dessert, everywhere since…
Drinks
Karkade
Dried hibiscus steeped into a drink the colour of ink and served either scalding or over ice. Sour, tannic and the…
Drinks
Sobia
A cold white drink of soaked rice and coconut blended with milk and sugar, sold from urns in Ramadan. Cloudy, sweet…
Drinks
Asab
Sugarcane juice, pressed and drunk within minutes. Nothing is added and nothing can be — it oxidises so fast that…
Lunch
Shorbat Adas
Yellow lentil soup, smooth as cream, with a hard squeeze of lemon at the end. The first thing you are given in Egypt.
Side dish
Egyptian Rice with Vermicelli
Short grain rice cooked with golden-fried vermicelli pasta in stock, fluffy and savoury.
Lunch
Egyptian Bean Sandwich
Warm spiced fava beans mashed with garlic, lemon and cumin, packed into pitta with tomato and parsley.
Dinner
Fatta
Layers of crisp toasted pitta and rice topped with tender lamb, a garlicky tomato sauce and a splash of vinegar…