Iraqi cuisine

History

Ingredients

• Vegetables such as eggplant, tomato, turnips, beans, shallots, okra, onion, lentils, cress, potato, cabbage, courgette, spinach, lettuce, leeks, artichokes, garlic, peppers and chilli peppers.
• Cereals including rice, bulghur wheat and barley.
• Pulses and legumes such as lentils, chickpeas, green beans, green grams, and cannellini beans.
• Fruits including olives, dates, raisins, apricots, plums, figs, grapes, melons, pomegranates, apples, cherries, quinces, and citrus fruits—oranges, lemons and limes.
• Cheeses such as baladi, feta and halloumi.
• Herbs and spices including cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, fenugreek, cumin, oregano, mint, tarragon, thyme, saffron, dried lime, cassia, dill, turmeric, baharat, advieh, sumac and za'atar.
• Nuts and seeds such as sesame, pistachios, almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts and pine nuts.

Common dishes

Mezza

• Iraqi sumac salad, a typical Iraqi salad with the addition of sumac berries.
• Baytinijan maqli, a dish often served cold, consisting of fried aubergine with tahini, lettuce, parsley and tomatoes, garnished with sumac and served on pita bread or sliced bread, often grilled or toasted. Variations include bell peppers, or a garlic-lemon vinaigrette.
• Fattoush, a salad made from several garden vegetables and toasted or fried pieces of pita bread.
• Tabbouleh, a salad dish, often used as part of a mezze. Its primary ingredients are finely chopped parsley, bulgur, mint, tomato, scallion, and other herbs with lemon juice, olive oil and various seasonings, generally including black pepper and sometimes cinnamon and allspice.
• Turshi, pickled vegetables in the cuisine of many Balkan and Middle East countries. It is a traditional appetizer, mezze for rakı, ouzo, tsipouro and rakia''.

  Dips

• Baba ghanoush, a dish of baked aubergine mashed and mixed with various seasonings.
• Hummus, a dip or spread made from cooked, mashed chickpeas, blended with tahini, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and garlic.
• Jajik, an appetizer, also used as a sauce for shish and döner kebab. Jajik is made of strained yogurt with cucumbers, garlic, salt, usually olive oil, pepper, dill, sometimes lemon juice and parsley, or mint added. The cucumbers are either puréed and strained, or seeded and finely diced. Olive oil, olives, and herbs are often used as garnishes.

  Soups and stews

• Fasolia yabsa, made up of tender lamb or veal, white kidney beans, tomato sauce and served over rice.
• Fasoulia, a soup of dry white beans, olive oil, and vegetables.
• Harissa, similar to keşkek, a porridge made of stewed and boned chicken and coarsely ground soaked wheat.
• Kebabs, a dish consisting of grilled or broiled meats on a skewer or stick. The most common kebabs include lamb and beef, although others use chicken or fish.
• Lentil soup, may be vegetarian or include meat, and may use brown, red, yellow or black lentils, with or without the husk.
• Maqluba, an upside-down rice and aubergine casserole, hence the name which means "upside-down". It is sometimes made with fried cauliflower instead of aubergine and usually includes meat—often braised lamb.
• Margat bamia or simply bamia, a stew made with okra and lamb or beef cubes in a tomato sauce.
• Margat baytinijan, an aubergine-based dish of the Balkans and the Middle East. All versions are based primarily on sautéed aubergine and tomato, usually with minced meat.

• Masgouf, a traditional Mesopotamian dish made with fish from the Tigris. It is an open-cut freshwater fish roasted for hours after being marinated with olive oil, salt, curcuma and tamarind while keeping the skin on. Traditional garnishes for the masgouf include lemon, chopped onions and tomatoes, as well as the clay-oven flatbreads common to Iraq and much of the Middle East.
• Pomegranate soup, called shorbat rumman in Iraq. It is made from pomegranate juice and seeds, yellow split peas, ground beef, mint leaves, spices, and other ingredients.
• Qeema, a minced meat, tomato and chickpea stew, served with rice. Traditionally prepared at the annual Ashura commemorations in southern Iraq and can also be served in funerals, weddings, etc. The name qeema is an ancient Akkadian word meaning "finely chopped".
• Quzi, stuffed roasted lamb.
• Hikakeh is a thin crust of slightly browned rice at the bottom of the cooking pot.
• Tashrib, a soup made with either lamb or chicken with or without tomatoes eaten with Iraqi nan; the bread is broken into pieces and the soup is poured over in a big bowl.
• Tepsi baytinijan, an Iraqi casserole. The main ingredient of the dish is aubergine, which is sliced and fried before placing in a baking dish, accompanied with chunks of lamb/beef/veal and/or meatballs, plus tomatoes, onions and garlic.

  Dumplings and meatballs

• Dolma, a family of stuffed vegetable dishes. The grape-leaf dolma is common. Courgette, aubergine, tomato and pepper are commonly used as fillings. The stuffing may or may not include meat.
• Falafel, a fried ball or patty made from spiced chickpeas or fava beans. Originally from Egypt, falafel is a form of common fast food in the Middle East, where it is also served as a kind of mezze and more commonly eaten with samoon with a salad and usually Amba as dressing
• Kofta, a family of meatball or meatloaf dishes in Middle Eastern, Indian, and Balkan cuisines. In the simplest form, koftas consist of balls of minced or ground meat—usually beef or lamb—mixed with spices or onions.
• Kubba, a dish made of rice or burghul, chopped meat, and spices. There are many varieties and variations of kubba. One of the best-known varieties is a torpedo-shaped burghul shell stuffed with chopped meat and fried. Other varieties are baked, poached, or even served raw. They may be shaped into balls, patties, or flat.
• Samosa, a small fried or baked pasty, which may be either half-moon shaped or triangular.

  Processed meat

• Pastırma, a highly seasoned, air-dried cured beef in the cuisines of the former Ottoman countries.
• Sujuk, a dry, spicy sausage eaten from the Balkans to the Middle East and Central Asia.

  Rice dishes

• Dolma, vine leaves stuffed with a mixture of ground lamb or beef with rice cooked with many fillings in the same pot, with pomegranate juice prominently added by North Iraqis to give it a unique taste.
• Biryani, several rice-based foods made with spices, rice usually basmati and أرز عنبر and meat/vegetable, collectively popular in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and among Muslims in Sri Lanka.
• Mutabbaq samak, fried fish served over stocked rice.
• Pilaf, similar to that of Iran.
• Quzi, a rice-based dish served with very slow-cooked lamb and roasted nuts and raisins.
• Tibeat, a Jewish-Iraqi dish made for Shabbat, slow-cooked chicken stuffed with rice, tomatoes, dried apricots and raisins, with a strong cardamom flavor.