COPPERWhat is the national dish of Libya?
Libya has no official national dish, and two are named. Bazin, specific to Libyan cuisine, is a dome of barley dough, beaten smooth with a stick, surrounded by a red lamb and tomato sauce, potatoes and hard-boiled eggs, eaten by hand. Couscous, steamed over lamb sauce, is the other candidate and the one Wikipedia's list of national dishes gives for Libya.
Why there are two answers
No Libyan law or decree names a national dish. Sources split between two dishes. Wikipedia's list of national dishes gives couscous for Libya. The encyclopedia's own article on bazin notes that it has been described as a national dish of Libya, recipe writers call it often considered the national dish, and the article on Libyan cuisine calls it one of the most recognisable Libyan dishes.
The difference is one of identity. Couscous is shared across the whole Maghreb: in 2020 Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia had it inscribed together on UNESCO's intangible heritage list, without Libya. Bazin, an Amazigh dish that the Libyan Food blog calls one of the most distinctive in North Africa, is the one tied specifically to Libyan cuisine.
What is bazin?
Bazin is an unleavened dough of barley flour, water and salt, usually with a little wheat flour. The best-known version uses three parts barley flour to one part wheat. The flour is cooked in boiling salted water, then beaten with a magraf, a stick made for the job, until it becomes a dense, smooth mass. That mass is shaped into a dome in the centre of a wide plate.
Around it goes a thick sauce of lamb or mutton fried with onion, turmeric, fenugreek, chilli, paprika and tomato paste, with potatoes and hard-boiled eggs arranged at the base. Broad beans or lentils sometimes go into the sauce, and some cooks add cooked pumpkin. It comes with lemon wedges and fresh or pickled chillies. Everyone eats from the same dish with the right hand, breaking off dough and dipping it in the sauce.
How bazin is made
Our bazin recipe uses 600 g of barley flour with 200 g of wheat flour and 600 g of lamb on the bone:
- Fry the lamb with onion, tomato paste, turmeric, fenugreek and chilli, then simmer in 1 litre of water for at least an hour.
- Sprinkle a handful of flour into 700 ml of boiling salted water and cook 5 minutes.
- Add the rest of the flour in a mound, cover and steam 15 minutes without stirring.
- Beat the dough hard against the pot with a wooden stick for 10 to 15 minutes, until it pulls away in one mass.
- Shape a dome, ladle the sauce over and set the lamb, potatoes and halved eggs around it.
Where bazin comes from
Bazin is an Amazigh dish and a staple of western Libya, where it is often the Friday lunch. The old method formed the dough into palm-sized cakes, cooked them in water in a copper pot called a qidir, then broke them up and worked them into one piece with a flat wooden ladle. Today many cooks use a mixer, which kneads the dough smooth in minutes.
Variations follow the region and the season: bazin with camel meat, chicken or broad beans, or in winter with hassa, a soup made with gideed, lamb or camel meat salted, sun-dried and kept in olive oil.
Libyan couscous, the other candidate
Couscous is eaten mostly in Tripoli and the west of the country, usually with lamb. In our Libyan couscous recipe, the grain is never boiled: it is steamed for 30 minutes in a basket above a red lamb sauce with pumpkin, so the steam of the meat flavours it. It is topped with boosla, sliced onions and chickpeas cooked down in the sauce, and finished with cinnamon. Couscous also has a sweet side in Libya: maghrood, couscous prepared with dates, sesame and honey and eaten as a dessert.
To see how the same grain is treated next door, read our articles on the national dish of Tunisia and the national dish of Algeria.
Other dishes to know from Libya
Shorba is the Libyan soup of Ramadan: small cubes of lamb browned with tomato paste and hararat spice, simmered with chickpeas and orzo, then finished with dried mint crushed between the palms and lemon at the table. Libyans also eat imbakbaka, pasta cooked in a spiced tomato sauce in one pot, and asida, a wheat dough eaten with butter, honey or date syrup. Shakshouka, eggs poached in tomato and pepper sauce, is the usual breakfast, and batata mubattana are fried potato slices stuffed with spiced minced meat.
All three recipes are on our page about the food of Libya. For the neighbouring kitchens, see our guide to North African food.
The recipes
- Bazin🇱🇾 Libya · 1 hour and 45 minutes
Couscous🇱🇾 Libya · 2 hours
Shorba🇱🇾 Libya · 1 hour and 25 minutes
Questions people ask
Is couscous the national dish of Libya?
Couscous is one of two candidates and the one given in Wikipedia's list of national dishes. Bazin is the other, described by several sources as a national dish of Libya.
What is bazin made of?
Mainly barley flour, water and salt, often with a little wheat flour, beaten into a firm dough and served in a dome with lamb and tomato sauce, potatoes and boiled eggs.
How do you eat bazin?
By hand, from a shared dish: you break off a piece of the dome with your right hand and dip it in the sauce.
How do you pronounce bazin?
"Ba-ZEEN", with the stress on the second syllable (Arabic البازين, [baːˈziːn]). It is also spelled bazeen or bazine.
What is served with Libyan couscous?
Lamb and pumpkin from the sauce it steams over, a topping of onions and chickpeas called boosla, and a dusting of cinnamon.
Keep reading
- Traditional food of Libya: 12 dishes to know
- What is the national dish of Algeria?
- What is the national dish of Egypt?
- What is the national dish of Morocco?
- What is the national dish of Sudan?
- What is the national dish of Tunisia?