Dinner
Shish Taouk
Chicken cubes marinated in yoghurt, garlic and lemon with a little tomato purée, grilled hard and served with toum…
🇱🇧 Cuisine
All 5555 recipes
Lebanese recipes
Lemon, parsley and a table covered in small plates. 52 Lebanese recipes, from the everyday to the ambitious.
The 52 recipes cover 8 of the site’s categories, among them 20 dinners, 17 appetisers and small plates, 7 desserts, 4 bakes, 1 breakfast and 1 drink. Of these, 7 are ready in 30 minutes or less, start to finish; the quickest are Lebanese Cabbage Salad (10 min), Carrot and Tahini Salad (15 min) and Shanklish Salad (15 min). For 23, the method times a wait such as rising, chilling or marinating, and the time at the top of the recipe includes it. By difficulty: 27 easy, 19 medium and 6 hard.
As written, 30 are vegetarian, 20 vegan, 21 gluten-free and 30 dairy-free. Another 9 meet a diet label only with a swap the recipe names, and the recipe says which.
Lebanese recipes — all 52 recipes
Appetizers
Moutabal
Aubergine charred whole over a flame until it collapses, then whipped with tahini, lemon and garlic into a smoky…
Desserts
Maamoul
Semolina shortbread moulded around dates, walnuts or pistachios, pressed in a carved wooden mould and baked pale…
Dinner
Spiced Lamb Lettuce Cups
Lamb mince fried hard with cumin, cinnamon and Aleppo pepper, spooned into cold lettuce cups with pickled onion — 32…
Appetizers
Muhammara
Roasted red peppers and walnuts ground to a coarse paste with pomegranate molasses and chilli. Aleppo’s dip rather…
Appetizers
Batata Harra
Fried potato cubes tossed off the heat with a raw paste of garlic, coriander and chilli. The point is that the…
Appetizers
Warak Enab
Vine leaves rolled around rice, tomato, parsley and mint, packed tight into a pot and cooked in lemon and oil. The…
Appetizers
Makdous
Baby aubergines boiled soft, stuffed with walnuts, garlic and chilli, then packed under olive oil. A preserve rather…
Appetizers
Shanklish Salad
A dry, sharp, thyme-rolled cheese crumbled over tomato and onion and dressed with oil. Shanklish is aged to the…
Condiment
Toum
Garlic and oil beaten to a stiff white emulsion with nothing else in it but lemon and salt. No egg, no dairy — the…
Appetizers
Sambousek
Half-moon pastries of spiced lamb and pine nuts, fried until blistered. The dough is made with oil rather than…
Appetizers
Spinach Fatayer
Triangular spinach pies, sharp with sumac and lemon, sealed so they hold their shape. The filling is never cooked…
Appetizers
Cheese Rakakat
Cigarettes of filo around salty white cheese, fried until they blister. The cheese has to be one that softens…
Appetizers
Balila
Warm chickpeas in their own liquor with cumin, garlic and lemon. Sold from carts for breakfast and about as simple…
Appetizers
Maghmour
Aubergine and chickpeas stewed down in tomato and garlic until everything collapses. Often called Lebanese moussaka…
Appetizers
Loubieh bi Zeit
Green beans braised soft in tomato and olive oil. Not blanched, not crisp — cooked until they give completely, which…
Appetizers
Hummus Beiruti
The rougher city version: chickpeas left coarse, cut through with parsley, chilli and pickle. Made to be eaten as a…
Appetizers
Fried Kibbeh
Torpedoes of bulgur and lean lamb, hollowed by hand, filled with spiced mince and pine nuts, and fried. The hardest…
Appetizers
Salatet Raheb
The monk's salad: aubergine burned over a flame until it collapses, then chopped rough with tomato, onion and lemon…
Appetizers
Carrot and Tahini Salad
Raw grated carrot dressed with a loosened tahini sauce and a lot of lemon. A five-minute salad that gets on the…
Dinner
Kafta bil Sanieh
Spiced lamb pressed flat into a tray, layered with potato and tomato and baked in one dish. The weeknight answer to…
Dinner
Kibbeh bil Sanieh
Two layers of bulgur and lamb around a middle of spiced mince and pine nuts, scored into diamonds and baked. The…
Dinner
Kibbeh Labaniyeh
Kibbeh balls poached in a stabilised yogurt sauce with garlic and dried mint. Warm, sour, and completely unlike the…
Dinner
Shish Barak
Tiny meat dumplings pinched into rings and cooked in the same garlic-and-mint yogurt. Fiddly enough that it is a…
Dinner
Sayadieh
Fish poached, set aside, and its stock used to cook rice under a mountain of onions taken almost to black. Tripoli…
Dinner
Samke Harra
Whole fish under a tahini, chilli and coriander sauce, from Tripoli. The sauce is loosened with the fish stock and…
Dinner
Sfiha Baalbakieh
Small open-topped meat pies from Baalbek, the meat sharp with pomegranate molasses and tomato. Open, not sealed, and…
Quick Meals
Arayes
Pitta stuffed with raw spiced lamb and grilled until the bread crisps and the fat from the meat soaks into it…
Dinner
Riz a Djaj
Chicken poached with whole spices, its broth used for the rice, the meat pulled and piled back on top with toasted…
Dinner
Djaj Mhammar
Chicken and potatoes roasted hard in lemon, garlic and olive oil until the edges blacken. Four ingredients doing all…
Dinner
Bamia bi Lahme
Okra and lamb stewed in tomato with a lot of coriander and garlic. Cooked long enough that the okra gives up…
Dinner
Fasolia bi Lahme
White beans and lamb stewed with tomato and a great deal of garlic and coriander. The everyday winter pot, eaten…
Dinner
Sheikh el Mahshi
Aubergines split, stuffed with lamb and pine nuts, and baked in tomato. The name means "the chief of stuffed…
Dinner
Koussa Mahshi
Small courgettes cored and filled with rice and lamb, cooked upright in tomato. Coring them without going through…
Dinner
Malfouf Mahshi
Cabbage leaves rolled tight around rice and lamb, packed in layers with garlic and dried mint. The winter cousin of…
Dinner
Yakhnet Batata
Potato and lamb stewed in tomato with coriander and garlic until the potatoes start to break and thicken the pot…
Dinner
Freekeh with Chicken
Green wheat, harvested young and roasted over fire, cooked like a pilaf under poached chicken. It tastes of smoke…
Dinner
Kousa bil Laban
Stuffed courgettes finished in the garlic and mint yogurt rather than tomato. Milder than the tomato version and, in…
Baking
Khubz Arabi
The pocket bread. Two minutes in a very hot oven, where steam trapped inside blows the loaf apart into two leaves —…
Baking
Ka'ak bil Simsim
The handbag-shaped sesame bread sold from glass carts on Beirut pavements, split and filled with za’atar or cheese…
Baking
Talami
A soft flat village loaf, dimpled with the fingers and baked with olive oil and a scatter of sesame. Larger and…
Desserts
Mouhalabieh
Milk set with cornflour, perfumed with rose and orange blossom, and scattered with pistachio. Barely sweet, eaten…
Desserts
Layali Lubnan
Lebanese nights: a semolina layer, a thick cream layer, syrup and nuts. Assembled in a dish and cut into squares…
Desserts
Atayef Asafiri
Little pancakes cooked on one side only, folded round thick cream and left open at one end so the pistachio shows…
Desserts
Halawet el Jibn
A stretchy semolina and cheese dough rolled around cream and soaked in syrup. Somewhere between a pastry and a sweet…
Desserts
Znoud el Sit
Filo fingers filled with thick cream, fried and dropped straight into cold syrup. The name means "the lady's upper…
Baking
Sfouf
A yellow semolina cake coloured and flavoured with turmeric, made with oil rather than butter and no eggs at all…
Desserts
Meghli
A dark spiced rice pudding made to celebrate a birth, soaked in caraway, anise and cinnamon and buried under soaked…