Syrian Home Cooking: Stuffed Vegetables, Kibbeh, Maqluba and Kishk

The best of Syrian cooking is usually not ordered in restaurants but cooked at home: dishes that take hours to prepare and bring the family around a big pot on Friday. If someone invites you to lunch at home, don't refuse — this is what you might find.

Stuffed vegetables and vine leaves

Courgettes and baby aubergines are hollowed and stuffed with rice, meat and spices, then cooked in tomato or yoghurt sauce. Vine leaves are rolled around the same filling and packed over pieces of meat or courgette. The women of the family can spend a whole morning rolling — which is also time for talking.

Maqluba

Layers of rice, fried aubergine (or cauliflower) and meat or chicken cooked together, then the pot is turned upside down onto a large tray in front of everyone. The flip is the show; it comes with yoghurt and cucumber.

Sheikh al-mahshi

Fried aubergines stuffed with minced meat and pine nuts, cooked in tomato sauce and eaten with rice. The name says it all: the "sheikh" of stuffed dishes.

Kibbeh in yoghurt and shish barak

Balls of kibbeh, or shish barak (little dumplings filled with meat, shaped like ears), cooked in yoghurt simmered with garlic and dried mint. A warm, comforting winter dish.

Kishk

Kishk is bulgur fermented with yoghurt, dried and ground, cooked into a hot winter soup or spread on manakish. Its taste is sour and deep, and few visitors know it — try it.

The pantry: summer in jars

At the end of summer the mouneh begins: makdous, red pepper paste, apricot and fig jams, olives, labneh balls in oil, dried molokhia. A Syrian house stores the summer to eat it in winter.

How to taste it as a visitor

Some popular restaurants serve a "dish of the day" at lunchtime: stuffed vegetables one day, maqluba the next. Some guesthouses cook for guests if asked in advance. See also our Syrian breakfast guide and the Syrian cuisine page.