Traditional food of Kuwait: 13 dishes to know

Kuwaiti food mixes Arabian and Iranian cooking with later Indian influence. Rice is in most main dishes, cooked in meat or fish broth with dried limes and spices, and fish from the Gulf is central. The most emblematic dishes are machboos, mutabbaq samak, harees and jireesh, with lugaimat and balaleet among the sweets.

Updated 2026-10-124 min read

What Kuwaiti food is built on

Kuwaiti cuisine is part of the Eastern Arabian kitchen: mainly Arabian and Iranian, with modern Indian influence, which is why biryani is a very common dish. Rice is the base of most main dishes. Sweets are mostly made from flour with saffron, nuts and dates, and many come from fried or baked doughs.

Seafood, especially fish, is a large part of the diet. Hamour (grouper) is served grilled, fried or with biryani rice, and safi (rabbitfish), maid (mullet) and sobaity (sea bream) are local favourites. Meals come with daqqus, a tomato sauce served alongside rice, mabboj, a hot red or green pepper sauce, and marrag, a broth of tomato and vegetables.

Rice and the sea

Kuwaiti machboos is usually made with chicken or mutton, sometimes fish, and served with daqqus. Mutabbaq samak means layered fish: historically, fish, rice and bread were layered in a pot that was turned over to serve. Raisins, cardamom and a tomato broth are often added, with nuts and parsley on top.

The rice repertoire goes further still. Maidem is white rice topped with ground fish mixed with spices; mashwi jeder puts meat, onions, potatoes and spices at the bottom of the pot, then flips it onto a plate; maglooba layers rice with meat, potatoes and eggplant; and khathra is rice and fish with extra sauce until it is almost liquid. Biryani, heavily seasoned rice with chicken or lamb, came from the Indian subcontinent and is a very common dish.

• Machboos — The best-known Kuwaiti dish: basmati rice cooked in a well-spiced chicken or mutton broth, with the meat or fish served on top. Our recipe sours the broth with dried limes and finishes the rice with rose water.
• Mutabbaq samak — Spiced fried fish, usually pomfret, with caramelised onions over rice cooked in well-spiced fish stock. Wikipedia calls it a national dish of Kuwait; it is also eaten in southern Iraq.
• Marabyan — Rice cooked with fresh or dried shrimp.
• Mumawwash — Rice cooked with green lentils (mash) and sometimes topped with dried shrimp. Muaddas is its counterpart made with red lentils.
• Mashkhool — White rice cooked over a layer of onion rings with turmeric and black pepper at the bottom of the pot, sometimes with potatoes and eggplant.
• Quzi — Roast lamb stuffed with rice, meat, eggs and other ingredients. Wikipedia counts it among the national dishes of Iraq too.

Wheat, stews and bread

Bread also goes into the pot: tashreeba is bread soaked in broth, and mahrooq isbaa is small pieces of bread cooked in tomato sauce with potato and eggplant. Lentil soup and marrag, a broth with tomato paste, vegetables and spices, are everyday soups.

• Harees — Wheat cooked with meat for hours, then mashed and usually topped with cinnamon sugar. Our recipe cooks it with bone-in chicken for four to five hours and beats it with a wooden pestle for 15 to 20 minutes, until no whole grain is left; the Kuwaiti version stays slightly coarser than the Emirati one.
• Jireesh — Cracked grain cooked with chicken or lamb, tomatoes and spices into a thick mash. In our version it cooks for about two hours, dried lime sours it, and slowly caramelised onion goes on top without being stirred in.
• Gabout — Flour dumplings stuffed with onion and black pepper, cooked in a thick meat and tomato stew.
• Margoog — A vegetable stew, usually with squash and eggplant, cooked with thin pieces of rolled-out dough.
• Khubz with mahyawa — Kuwait's traditional bread is khubz, a large flatbread baked in a special oven and often topped with sesame seeds. It is often served with mahyawa, a tangy fish sauce.

Sweets and tea

Other Kuwaiti sweets include darabeel, very thin rolled layers of flour, egg, milk and sugar; gers ogaily, a cake of eggs, flour, sugar, cardamom and saffron served with tea; bayth elgitta, fried cookies filled with ground nuts and named after the egg of the sandgrouse; and elba, a milk pudding with saffron and cardamom.

Zalabia, swirls of fried dough soaked in syrup of sugar, lemon and saffron, ghraiba, cardamom butter cookies served with Arabic coffee, and khabeesa, a sweet of flour and oil, are found across the Gulf. Maghuta is a Kuwaiti pudding thickened with sago instead of starch and flavoured with saffron.

Tea is drunk black in small glasses called istikana, alongside Arabic coffee, karak tea, dried lime tea and laban, a buttermilk.

• Balaleet — Sweet saffron vermicelli served with a savoury omelette on top, a breakfast dish of the Gulf.
• Lugaimat — Fried yeast dumplings topped with a syrup of sugar and saffron. Sab alqafsha is a similar sweet with extra saffron and cardamom syrup.

Cook Kuwaiti food at home

Machboos and mutabbaq samak are both named as the national dish of Kuwait. Copper has full recipes for machboos, harees and jireesh, with ingredients and step-by-step methods, on our page about the food of Kuwait, alongside other Middle Eastern recipes.

Mutabbaq samak and quzi are shared with southern Iraq, and machboos with the whole Gulf. Compare with the traditional food of Iraq and the traditional food of Saudi Arabia.

The recipes

• Harees🇰🇼 Kuwait · 13 hours and 30 minutes
• Jireesh🇰🇼 Kuwait · 5 hours and 40 minutes
• Machboos🇰🇼 Kuwait · 2 hours and 20 minutes

Questions people ask

Keep reading

• What is the national dish of Kuwait?
• Traditional food of Bahrain: 13 dishes to know
• Traditional food of Iran: 14 dishes to know
• Traditional food of Iraq: 13 dishes to know
• Traditional food of Israel: 14 dishes to know
• Traditional food of Jordan: 13 dishes to know

Sources

1. Kuwaiti cuisine — Wikipedia
2. Kuwaiti cuisine — Arabic Wikipedia
3. Mutabbaq samak — Wikipedia
4. Kabsa — Wikipedia
5. Quzi — Wikipedia

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