Kebab Maghdour – Moroccan Tagine of Cubed Meat

Kebab Maghdour is a traditional Moroccan dish in which brochette meat is cooked tagine style. Fried or poached eggs are often added as garnish. It’s quick, easy and delicious, and a great recipe to try if you’re new to Moroccan cooking.

Definition of Kebab Maghdour

In Moroccan cuisine, kebab refers to skewers of cubed meat (usually lamb or beef), poultry or fish. It’s the cousin of shish kebab but far from Doner kebab, also known as shawarma.

Now that we know what kebab means, let’s move on to the second word.

Maghdour in Arabic means “betrayed.” Now, there are two stories to explain the reason this word is used. One of them is because we can make the dish using bones left after boning meat intended for real kebab. The bones would have been stripped from most of their meat, leaving only the illusion of taste while the meat is hardly there.

However, the second and more famous story behind the name is that meat, instead of being grilled and served on skewers, is betrayed and ends up in a tagine or pot, where it’s cooked with a sauce. This way, the kebab meat can feed more people than grilled skewers would have.

Ways to Make Kebab Maghdour

Many of us grew up seeing our mothers make kebab maghdour frequently. When unexpected guests came, this dish was more than likely to be served. There are a few ways to go about making it.

The meat for this dish can be:

1. char-grilled halfway; to cook the meat from outside then transferred to the pot for the rest of the cooking. In this case, make sure you’ve used a tender cut of meat such as tenderloin.
2. cooked in a pot or tagine from scratch.

And, as already mentioned, there is a variation of kebab maghdour with bones (you could use ribs) but it’s not as common as the one with cubed meat.

You can use tender cuts of meat or stewing meat; the only difference is the time it takes to cook until tender (but never medium or rare). Usually lamb or beef is used. You can also use chicken or turkey, although these two are fairly new.

The sauce in kebab maghdour can be made with vegetable and/or olive oil. There’s also a variation with butter called kebab messahhed. The latter requires less onion and is perfect for leftover kebabs which have already been grilled.

As a general rule, kebab maghdour is a meat-only dish. However, cookbook writer H. Dinia mentioned that in Rbati (Rabat) cooking, there are many recipes that fall under this umbrella and many of them have seasonal vegetables added during the cooking. Unfortunately her book on Rbati cuisine is no longer in print.

My Tip for Char-Grilled Flavor

Some recipes call for kebab maghdour to be cooked twice—first the meat is grilled for smoky flavor before it’s added to the pot for the second part of the cooking. But if you can’t do that and still want char-grilled flavor, I suggest you use a bit of smoked paprika or liquid smoke in the seasoning for the meat.