Authentic Arabic cuisine in Jordan and its centuries-old ingredients, photos

Having been in Jordan and not trying the national Jordanian cuisine, you lose a lot. Having tried many different dishes, we did not remain indifferent to this country and wrote about the delicacies of Jordanian cuisine. As it turned out, in fact, Jordanian cuisine does not exist, in this country there is a national Arabic cuisine.

It is considered one of the most delicious and refined traditional cuisines in the world. Having visited here, we realized that food in this country is one of the main elements of the national culture of Jordan, through which the people express their benevolence and generosity. As we already wrote in the last article about holidays in Jordan, food here is a festive ritual, and do not be surprised if a Jordanian you don't know much offers to dine with him or invites you to his place for tea or delicious Arabic cuisine.

National Arab cuisine stands out from other cuisines with its flat cakes, snacks (mezze), oriental sweets, traditional lamb dishes, national dish mansaf and many other dishes. You can taste all the traditional dishes in any restaurant or cafe in the country, which we did by going to one of the restaurants in Jordan.

Arabic cuisine

The restaurant in which we first tried the traditions of cooking is called Reem albawadi, this restaurant is one of the 20 best restaurants in the east, we have already written about this restaurant in the article about holidays in Jordan. How much is lunch in such an establishment, you ask? - it was about 1200 rubles per person.

From the appetizers, we managed to taste a juicy and very tasty dish called mezze... Who does not know what a mezze is - a set of small portions of snacks, and the main composition of the ingredients is different for everyone, but the main and invariable ingredient of an Arab snack is a flat cake or bread. First of all, the mezze was brought to us as the very first dish before the main lunch, the portions of mezze were such that we almost ate our fill.

From the main dishes of Arab cuisine, we ordered the national dish mansaf. Mansaf is lamb or mutton boiled in sour cream with different ingredients, from such ingredients we had bread and pine nuts. The very tasty mutton just shocked us, we have never eaten such juicy mutton, apparently pickling in sour cream gives such a juicy effect.

From one such dish, this country conquered our heart forever. Of all we tried that day, there was a dish called kebab. Kebab is a hot dish and is cooked over charcoal or fire. In our case, we ordered a boneless chicken kebab and a beef kebab with all the bones removed. After we tasted all the meat dishes, our hearts were in love with the cuisine of Jordan and our bellies were drawn to the ground.

Do not forget that you are visiting Jordan, according to tradition, Jordanians eat only with their hands, in many restaurants they will not serve you any forks, do not forget this and wash your hands well before eating. The second advice when absorbing food is to eat only with the right hand, the left hand is considered unclean, we already wrote in more detail about the traditions in our last article.

On the next days of rest in Jordan, the tradition of the country in front of us more and more revealed its secrets and traditions of dishes, this time we tried a traditional dish - farudge... Farudj - grilled chicken with a spit, which is always served with fresh salad and fresh bread, from this dish our bellies again reached the ground all day and the scales showed our weight by 1 kilogram more.

What else of the main dishes is worthy of your attention is cooked fish dishes, fish are very rare here, nevertheless, they like fish like sayadia... In Arabic cuisine, fried sayadiyah is always served with rice and bread, have you already noticed that all dishes are served here only with bread?

Arabic cuisine is also famous for its oriental sweets, we have already talked about some of them on our trip to Israel, but we did not mention some of them. Having tasted the rest of the sweets of this country, we decided to share our impressions. By the way, all the sweets that are prepared here have their roots and recipes going back far into antiquity, since then the recipes have never changed.

Many oriental sweets will be served to you at the hotel upon arrival, they will be treated to you in some institution, for example, in the spa room on the Dead Sea, we were given to taste almost all types of sweets ... It is worth noting that many of the sweets are not only very tasty, but also have a beautiful shape and appearance, therefore, at the airport, we noticed many tourists taking away whole boxes of sweets to someone as a gift.

One of the sweets of Arabian cuisine is baklava... Baklava is a puff pastry with nuts, and between the layers of dough you will find delicious honey. Another sweetness is konafa, which is a pies made of small pieces of dough stuffed with goat cheese or often found with a stuffing of crushed nuts. Ataif - pancakes stuffed with cheese or crushed nuts, this dish is mainly served for the holiday Ramadan... An amazing dish is Mamul, is a cake with dates or nuts. We advise you to try Muhallabiya - milk pudding, composed of infusion with orange peels, very tasty and nutritious. That is, in principle, all that the tradition of the peoples of sweets gave us to try.

In various cafes in Jordan, it is very good to disperse between tourists another type of dish called shawarma... You have already guessed what it is, in Russia this type of dish is called shawarma, so we will not focus much on this dish, but know that this dish came from the ancient traditional Bedouin recipes, from where all Arab cuisine originated.

The last thing I would like to share with you my impressions are drinks, or rather strong alcohol as coffee or tea... Arabic very strong coffee is served here only in small cups; as a rule, cardamom is added to the composition of such coffee. Turkish coffee is also distinguished by its thickness and a thick layer of coffee grounds at the bottom of the cup. Coffee in Arabic cuisine is a very good example of etiquette, in any hospitable home or shop you will definitely be offered coffee or tea with mint, so do not try to refuse, this is a bad form for the interlocutor.

Well, in principle, all the main dishes of Arab cuisine with photos that you can try in any cafe or restaurant during the trip were considered. Be sure to check the section on tours to Jordan for 2021.