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Lablabi: the quintessential Tunisian fast food. Now don’t let the “fast food” label turn you off. It’s prepared quickly in casual cafeteria-style joints but the food is anything but unhealthy.
Lablabi is traditionally served quite simply, as it’s a dish meant to provide sustenance for cold days, using frugal ingredients.
What Is Lablabi?
Lablabi (or lablebi) is a Tunisian soup, traditionally eaten for breakfast. It is a hearty meal, containing chickpeas that are in a flavored thin soup, and it is served over pieces of stale bread and topped with a poached egg and a seasoned dressing.
Typically, it is garnished with tuna and olives and it is commonly found in restaurants throughout Tunisia.
Lablabi Recipe
Lablabi is a very simple soup to make. In its simplest form, lablabi is chickpea broth seasoned with spices. The garnishes are simple, yet complement the broth and add additional textures and flavors. Although traditionally eaten for breakfast, lablabi is now enjoyed throughout the day.
The key ingredients that give this soup its flavorful and spicy profile are dried chickpeas, cumin, caraway, and harissa. It is important when making this dish to use dried chickpeas rather than canned, although it would be faster and more convenient.
The simple broth that is created when cooking the chickpeas gives the dish its unique flavor. When making the soup with canned chickpeas, it is best to replace the water with stock to get a well-seasoned dish.
Chickpeas and their spiced broth provide a hearty dose of protein and stale bread is brought back to life in the liquid. Over the years, the dish has evolved into an “Instagram-worthy” bowl of various colorful toppings, all of which add to the deliciousness of lablebi.
Variant Of Lablabi
As with many traditional recipes, lots of variations of lablabi can be found across Tunisia and further afield. In Assyrian cuisine, there is also a chickpea-based dish called lablabi and in Iraq, lemon juice is mixed with chickpeas to create a similar dish.
The Turkish version, nohut corbasi, is very similar, but with the addition of lamb shank.
In Tunisia, variations to the dish include the additions of cilantro, parsley, capers, or scallions, and a traditional, but the rare version is made with cow trotters and is called hergma.
Best Serve For Lablebi
This Tunisian chickpea soup is flavored with garlic and cumin and served with perfectly stale bread to make this dish both scrumptious and filling.
You’ll find it garnished with eggs, parsley, and even scallions.
This is a great dish for enjoying the Tunisian winters, which, while still warm compared to much of the northern hemisphere, can get chilly (especially out in the desert).
Be Sure to Try These Other Authentic Tunisian Dishes!
Be sure to recreate this incredible delicacy. Bon appétit!
Recipe for Tunisian Lablebi
Ingredients
- 1 lbs dried chickpeas purchase and soak the day before
- Olive Oil Canned Tuna
- Harissa Paste
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- Lemon Juice
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Salt
- Black Pepper
- Cumin
- Stale bread purchase fresh bread the day before or rip a piece of bread to shreds into your bowl a few hours before serving so that they stale up by the time it’s time to eat
Instructions
- Transfer dried chickpeas to a large bowl and fill with water and 1 tbsp salt. Cover with a towel and set aside.
- After about 24 hours, check on the chickpeas. They should be fully soaked and there should be a thin layer of foam at the top. Rinse and transfer the chickpeas to another container. Keep the chickpeas that you want to use for the lablabi and freeze the rest in a ziplock bag.
- Transfer the soaked chickpeas into a pot, fill with water and bring to a boil. Once it starts boiling, cover the pot with a lid and bring the heat down to low. Slow cook the chickpeas for 1 hour or until very soft (it may take longer)
- Take a piece of stale bread and rip it into small pieces. These should go in a bowl that you will use for serving one portion of the lablabi..Note: If you prefer to skip the chickpea soaking and cooking process, you can use canned pre-cooked chickpeas instead and skip steps 1 through 4 and jump to step 5.
- In a separate pot, boil an egg (or however many eggs you and your friends want - 1 to 2 eggs per portion is ideal in our opinion) for about 3 minutes until it is partially cooked and the yolk is slightly runny. You can also poach the eggs directly into the simmering pot then scoop the egg, broth, and chickpeas into your bowl.
- Pour a desired amount of chickpeas and broth into the bowl with the stale bread pieces.
- To the same bowl, add 1 to 2 egg(s), olive oil-preserved tuna, and a desired amount of true-to-origins harissa paste (mild, spicy, or smoky).
- Add a desired amount of cumin, lemon juice, black pepper, salt, and extra virgin olive oil.
- Mix altogether with two spoons.
- Dig in while still hot and fresh!
