Egyptian Recipes

Om Ali (Egyptian Bread Pudding)

Om Ali is Egypt's most beloved dessert, a warm, sweet pudding made from torn pieces of puff pastry or bread baked in sweetened milk with nuts, coconut, and raisins until golden and bubbling. It sits somewhere between a bread pudding and a milk-soaked pastry and manages to be simultaneously comforting and festive. The dish is a fixture of Egyptian restaurants, home celebrations, and Ramadan gatherings, where it is often served in communal baking dishes at the end of a large meal. Despite its simplicity, Om Ali manages to taste luxurious, the puff pastry creates layered, crispy edges while the centre remains soft and creamy with the absorbed milk.

★★★★★Highest Rated

1 hrEasyEgypt · Middle Eastern

Recipe by FoodChef · Africook

Egyptian Koshari

Koshari is Egypt's national dish and its most famous street food, rice, lentils and macaroni layered together, topped with a spiced tomato sauce, crisp fried onions and a sharp garlic-vinegar dressing. It is a dish of components, and none of them is complicated. What makes koshari work is that all of them are made separately and assembled at the end, so each keeps its own texture: the rice and lentils soft, the pasta firm, the onions properly crisp, the sauce sharp with vinegar and cumin. It is cheap, filling and entirely plant-based as standard, which is why it feeds an enormous number of people every day. Koshari shops exist across Egypt doing nothing else, and it is eaten as often at home. Its ubiquity is genuine, the comparison to macaroni cheese in the source is about how ordinary it is rather than what it tastes like. The daqqa, the garlic and vinegar dressing, is what stops the whole thing being stodgy, and it is the element most often underdone by people making it for the first time. Be generous with it. Chickpeas are usually added on top.

41 minMediumEgypt

Recipe by Blessing · Africook

Balah El Sham

Balah el sham is fried choux pastry soaked in syrup, and it is one of the desserts Egyptians most associate with childhood. It is piped into short lengths through a star nozzle, fried until golden and ridged, then dropped into cool sugar syrup, which seeps into every groove. The name translates from Arabic as Levant dates, and it contains no dates at all. It is called that for its size and shape, and Sham for the Levant region where it originated. It is eaten across much of the Middle East and in parts of Eastern Europe under other names, and the closest familiar comparison is churros, with one important difference: churros are rolled in cinnamon sugar, while balah el sham is submerged in syrup. Choux is the technique, and it is the same pastry used for éclairs and profiteroles. Flour is cooked into hot liquid until it forms a ball and turns glossy, then eggs are beaten in off the heat, one at a time. What is unusual here is that it is fried rather than baked, which gives a crisp ridged shell around a hollow, airy centre. It is often split and filled with cream, custard, mascarpone, chocolate or nuts, and pistachios on top are standard. It can be eaten hot or cold.

★★★★★Highest Rated

50 minMediumEgypt

Recipe by FoodChef · Africook

Swabaa Zainab

Swabaa Zainab means Zainab's fingers, and the name is the dish. Ridged fingers of semolina and flour dough are fried until crisp and dropped into cold sugar syrup, coming out crunchy outside and soft within. Two stories attach to the name and Egyptians tell both. In one, a clever girl invented the sweet and guests praised it by saying teslam sawabe' Zainab, may God bless Zainab's fingers. In the other, it is named for Sayyida Zainab, granddaughter of the Prophet, who is deeply venerated in Egypt and after whom one of Cairo's central districts is named. Neither account can be verified and both are held affectionately. Its occasions are Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr above all, and it appears at popular celebrations through the year. It belongs to the family of Arab syrup sweets that also produces meshabek and basbousa, and it is described as among the oldest of them, mastered by Arab cooks and carried outward from there. Egyptian households share the recipe between families rather than from books, which is why the proportions shift from one kitchen to the next. It is eaten in the morning as readily as in the evening, with tea, coffee or juice.

★★★★★Highest Rated

45 minMediumEgypt

Recipe by Blessing · Africook