Tagine, the Moroccan Pot That Keeps Its Steam
A clay pot with a tall cone for a lid sits over a low flame, and the kitchen slowly fills with cumin. In Morocco the dish and the pot share one name: tagine. Meat, vegetables and spices go in, the lid comes down, and the heat stays low for a long time. Nobody lifts the lid to check. The pot already knows.
Why the cone
The shape is the whole trick. Steam rises from the stew into the cool upper part of the cone, gathers on the clay and runs back down the walls onto the food. Very little escapes. The meat cooks in its own vapour and turns tender with only a little water, which mattered in a dry country where water was carried, not piped.
The clay holds its heat as well, so the dish stays warm long after it leaves the coals. A lid that gives back what it takes.
The head of the shop
Most tagines lean on ras el hanout, a blend whose name means “head of the shop”. It was the spice seller’s best mix, and every seller had his own. Some blends carry a dozen spices, some more than twenty: cumin, ginger, cinnamon, turmeric, black pepper, coriander, sometimes dried rose petals. Two shops in the same souk will sell you two different heads.
Four tagines worth knowing
- Chicken with preserved lemon and olives. The classic. The lemons are salted and left for weeks until the rind turns soft and almost sweet. Nothing else tastes like it.
- Lamb with prunes and almonds. Fruit in Morocco goes into the savoury pot, not the dessert course. Prunes melt into the sauce; toasted almonds go on top at the end.
- Kefta with eggs. Spiced meatballs simmered in tomato, with eggs cracked into the sauce in the last minutes. Fast, by tagine standards, and eaten straight from the pot with bread.
- Fish with chermoula. Sardines or white fish marinated in chermoula, a paste of herbs, garlic, cumin, paprika and lemon, laid over sliced potatoes, tomatoes and peppers.
What goes into the pot still changes from region to region and from family to family, depending on who is cooking and what their grandmother did.
The pot belongs to the table
A tagine is usually set down in the middle, and everyone eats from it with bread, reaching for the part nearest them. The cook does not serve you. The pot does. To be handed a piece of bread at that table is to be counted in.
Buying and caring for one
North Africa sells two kinds, and the difference matters.
- Serving or cooking. Many brightly painted tagines are made for the table, not the fire. For cooking, look for a plain or lightly glazed clay pot sold as a cooking tagine.
- Seasoning. Before its first use, soak an unglazed clay tagine in water for a few hours, rub it with olive oil and warm it slowly in a low oven. It is less likely to crack.
- Heat. Low only. On gas, put a heat diffuser under it. Never move it from hot to cold, and never put it on a high flame.
- Tougher options. Emile Henry makes a flame-proof ceramic tagine that goes on the hob. Le Creuset makes one with a cast iron base and a stoneware cone. Both forgive more than clay; clay still holds the steam best.
The lid comes off
After an hour or two, someone lifts the cone at the table. The steam that has been circling the pot all afternoon goes up at last, into the room, into the faces leaning over it. That is the moment the dish was waiting for. It kept the steam so it could give it to you.