Harira (Moroccan lentil and chickpea soup)

Harira is a traditional Moroccan lentil and chickpea soup that's packed with warm spice flavors. With a tomato base, fresh herbs and ginger for a gentle kick, it's a hearty, comforting and delicious combination.

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Ever since I first visited Morocco as a child, I've been a fan of the flavor combinations you find in many Moroccan foods. I love the clever use of spices and and the combining of sweet fruit in savory dishes such as some tagines.

In many cases, the use of herbs and spices allows relatively simple base ingredients be transformed. And this soup is a perfect case in point. The other ingredients are relatively humble pantry staples, but the end dish is certainly something special.

Harira variations and core components 

As with many traditional dishes, you'll find a number of variations in this soup. Some are more loaded up with additions and lots of spices, while others are more light. Many start with a meat base while others are vegan. Some add vermicelli pasta, others rice, while some skip both.

But there are some core components as well:

• Onion and celery as an aromatic base.
• Tomato in some form to flavor the soup's liquid.
• Chickpeas and lentils are in pretty much all to give some bulk
• Cilantro and parsley to give a herbal freshness.
• Dry spices - the exact ones and amounts can vary, but turmeric and ginger at least, as well as salt and pepper, are in nearly all.
• Flour-water paste as a thickener. 

The flour-water paste is something that's relatively unique to this soup. Yes, other soups use some flour but it is generally to absorb some of the fat from cooking some of the ingredients and added before you add liquid. Here, you mix flour with water to create a kind of slurry called a "tedouria". You add this to the soup towards the end of cooking to thicken it up.

In fact, this paste is where the name of this dish comes from. "Harira" derives from the word for silk in Arabic which refers to the texture of the soup, largely due to this slury that leads to a smooth finish to the final soup.

Here I have gone with a fairly classic combination of ingredients, drawing on a few traditional recipes including this Taste of Maroc recipe and this My Moorish Plate recipe. It's the kind of recipe you can easily tweak to your taste and what you have. You can use more or less ginger, in particular, to give it more of a spice kick (or not).

Do you need to use dried chickpeas?

In short, no, but I think they are better. I've used dried chickpeas for this, partly as it lets you more easily scale up and down the recipe, but more importantly, because they take on the flavors during cooking a lot better.

You can switch them for pre-cooked from a can, which speeds up the process but, as I say, it means they don't take on the broader flavors as much. If you do, scale back the salt and add the chickpeas at the same time as the vermicelli, much later than below.

When would you typically serve this dish?

This is a traditional dish during Ramadan as part of the Iftar supper (the evening meal to break the daytime fast). You would typically eat this as an appetizer, often with fresh dates on the side. However, it is also popular other times of year, too, and makes a great lunch or even main meal on a cold day.

Harira is such a comforting, delicious and hearty soup that makes a wonderful appetizer or full meal, if the mood suits you. This Moroccan lentil and chickpea soup uses relatively everyday pantry ingredients and transforms them into something special. It will become a fast favorite.

Try these other Moroccan dishes:

• Zaalouk (eggplant and tomato salad/dip)
• Loubia (Moroccan stewed white beans, great as a side or vegetarian main)
• Moroccan raw carrot salad (super simple, fresh flavors, great with many dishes)
• Mrouzia (honey lamb tagine)
• Plus get more North African recipes in the archives. If you enjoy chickpeas you might also like lablabi, a simple Tunisian chickpea soup/stew flavored with cumin and garlic.

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