Cuisine · Lebanon

Lebanese cooking

Lebanese recipes tested and adapted for the home kitchen — 9 dishes from Lebanon, each with step-by-step instructions and ingredient notes.

Sort by

Knafeh with Pistachios and Orange Blossom with kataifi, akkawi cheese and pistachios — Lebanon recipe

🇱🇧LebanonAdvanced

Flour and Confectionery Products

Knafeh with Pistachios and Orange Blossom

Knafeh is the great sweet of the Levant: a layer of mild, stretchy cheese buried between two layers of buttered kataifi pastry, baked until the shredded strands turn deep gold, then drenched in cold orange blossom syrup the moment it leaves the oven. Salty and sweet, crisp and molten at once, it's eaten warm while the cheese still pulls, scattered with green pistachios. In Lebanon it's as much a breakfast, tucked into sesame bread, as a dessert.

90 min610 kcal8 serves

🌿Vegetarian

Kofta Kebab Skewers with ground lamb, onion and parsley — Lebanon recipe

🇱🇧LebanonMedium

Meat Dishes

Kofta Kebab Skewers

Kofta kebab (kafta in Lebanon) is a Lebanese dish of seasoned ground lamb — mixed with grated onion, parsley, and warm spices, then pressed onto flat metal skewers. It belongs to the ground-meat branch of the wider kebab family found from Morocco to Central Asia, distinct from shish kebab, which threads whole cubes of marinated meat instead (see the tip below for that version). The kofta is grilled over direct high heat, ideally charcoal, until charred outside and just cooked through. The technique that separates good kofta from crumbly kofta is kneading the mixture until it turns cohesive and paste-like, and squeezing the grated onion completely dry before mixing it in. The mixture chills for 15 to 30 minutes before shaping; if you grill over charcoal, allow extra time for the coals to burn down to white ash.

45 min380 kcal4 serves

🌾Gluten-free

Labneh with Sizzled Tomatoes with yogurt, tomato and garlic — Lebanon recipe

🇱🇧LebanonMedium

Sauces and Dips

Labneh with Sizzled Tomatoes

Labneh is strained yogurt — drained overnight until it's thick, tangy, and spreadable. The tomatoes are the opposite: cooked fast in very hot oil with garlic and cumin until they blister and burst, then poured while still sizzling over the cold labneh. The contrast is the point. Cold and creamy against hot and jammy. You can buy labneh at most Middle Eastern grocery stores and save the overnight step, but making it yourself takes nothing except time.

30 min180 kcal4 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free⚡Quick

Lebanese Falafel with dried chickpeas, flat leaf parsley and fresh cilantro — Lebanon recipe

🇱🇧LebanonAdvanced

Vegetable and Mushroom Dishes

Lebanese Falafel

Falafel is a deep-fried ball of ground soaked chickpeas, fava beans or both, mixed with herbs and spices and sold as street food across the Levant and Egypt. This version uses chickpeas only; in Lebanon the mixture is often half chickpeas and half dried fava beans. The dried chickpeas soak for 24 hours and the ground mixture chills for 1 hour, with no flour or egg; the hands-on work takes about 70 minutes. The shell cracks under the teeth and the centre stays moist, coarse and green. Eat it straight from the fryer with tahini sauce, pickles and warm flatbread.

70 min580 kcal4 serves

🌱Vegan🌾Gluten-free🌿Vegetarian

Muhammara with roasted red peppers, walnuts and pomegranate molasses — Lebanon recipe

🇱🇧LebanonMedium

Sauces and Dips

Muhammara

Muhammara is a roasted red pepper and walnut dip from Aleppo, Syria, thickened with breadcrumbs and sharpened with pomegranate molasses; the name is Arabic for 'reddened'. Its flavor is unlike anything else in the mezze world: sweet from the peppers, tangy from pomegranate molasses, earthy from toasted walnuts, with a slow heat from Aleppo pepper. Breadcrumbs give it body and a slightly grainy texture that holds up on pita. The recipe makes about 650 g (roughly 2½ cups), enough for 6 as part of a mezze. The dip improves overnight — the flavors round out and the texture firms slightly. Unlike hummus, which can be polarising, muhammara tends to win over everyone who tries it.

20 min240 kcal6 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌱Vegan⚡Quick

Oven-Roasted Chicken Shawarma with boneless chicken thighs, garlic and lemon juice — Lebanon recipe

🇱🇧LebanonAdvanced

Meat Dishes

Oven-Roasted Chicken Shawarma

This home-oven shawarma trades the vertical spit for a fiercely hot sheet pan and a final pass under the broiler. The chicken thighs stay juicy while their thin edges blister and char, which gives the platter the roasted spice flavor people expect from shawarma. Serve it with warm pita, toum, pickles and chopped vegetables, or turn the same chicken into a rice bowl.

300 min515 kcal6 serves

💪High protein

Pita Bread with bread flour, yeast and olive oil — Lebanon recipe

🇱🇧LebanonAdvanced

Flour and Confectionery Products

Pita Bread

Pita (from the Greek πίτα) is the leavened flatbread of the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean. Flatbreads like it have been baked in the Near East for thousands of years, though the steam-puffed pocket is thought to be a much later development. The pocket forms during baking: when a thin disc of well-hydrated yeast dough hits an extremely hot baking surface, the water in the dough converts instantly to steam, inflating the two layers of dough apart like a balloon. As the bread cools, the steam escapes and the pocket collapses — but the internal separation remains, creating the pocket that makes pita the ideal vehicle for falafel, shawarma, hummus, and mezze. The technique is simple but precise: the right dough hydration, the correct thickness (4 to 5 mm), and a screaming-hot baking surface are the three variables that determine whether a pita puffs completely or bakes flat.

90 min220 kcal8 serves

🌱Vegan🌿Vegetarian

Tabbouleh with bulgur, parsley and tomato — Lebanon recipe

🇱🇧LebanonMedium

Salads

Tabbouleh

Tabbouleh is a Lebanese herb salad — not, as many Western recipes would have it, a grain salad with herbs in it. The correct ratio is roughly four parts chopped parsley to one part bulgur by volume. The bulgur is present for texture and a gentle nuttiness, but the parsley is the point: the salad should be intensely green, assertively flavoured, and taste like fresh herbs dressed with lemon rather than wheat dressed with garnish. Fine bulgur (#1) soaks directly in the lemon-olive oil dressing without any cooking, which keeps the texture light. The tomatoes are salted and drained before going in so they don't flood the salad with watery juice. Everything is finely chopped by hand — a knife, not a food processor, which turns the parsley to paste.

30 min165 kcal4 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌱Vegan⚡Quick

Toum with garlic and lemon juice — Lebanon recipe

🇱🇧LebanonEasy

Sauces and Dips

Toum

Toum is a Lebanese garlic sauce whipped into a fluffy white emulsion with just garlic, lemon juice, oil, and salt. It pairs with grilled chicken, shawarma, falafel, or roasted vegetables. The recipe makes about 500 g, and a serving is 2 tablespoons (about 30 g). Chill it for an hour before serving. Toum lives in the fridge only: use it within 4 days and freeze the rest in portions.

15 min195 kcal16 serves

🌿Vegetarian⚡Quick🌾Gluten-free