Mechoui

Mechoui is whole lamb or sheep, roasted slowly until the meat pulls away from the bone with no effort at all. The word comes from the Arabic for grilling or roasting, and the dish is found across the Maghreb, with the details shifting between countries. In Morocco it usually means a whole animal cooked in a clay oven over wood, a pit or domed oven that surrounds the lamb with even, indirect heat over several hours. In Algeria and more broadly in Maghrebi cooking it more often means spit-roasting over a fire. Both produce the same result by different routes: skin that crisps, and meat underneath that collapses. How it is served is inseparable from what it is. Mechoui appears at a diffa, a feast, and often at the beginning of the meal rather than the end. The host takes pieces with the right hand and offers them to guests. No cutlery is used, and none is needed, the meat comes apart between the fingers, which is both the test of whether it is properly cooked and the reason it is eaten this way. In Marrakech it is closely associated with the pit ovens of the medina, where it has been cooked commercially for generations. It is celebration food by construction: nobody roasts a whole lamb for four people on a Tuesday.