The Tunisian way of eating is slow and pleasant.
Learn a few fundamentals of Tunisian eating customs: your life will be enriched with flavors, textures, and pleasures.
The life of Tunisians turns a lot around food and meals. From the effort of selecting the best places for our grocery shopping to the time spent in the kitchen, and the hours spent around the table.
Tunisian Eating Times
Tunisians eat 4-5 times a day:
- Breakfast is early in the morning
- There’s a morning snack around 11 AM, people usually get some nuts, Mraweb, a beloved local delicacy of half-cooked eggs, or anything else from the street vendors (for some it’s just a coffee break)
- Lunch is between 1 and 2 PM, and is usually at least an hour long
- The afternoon snack is around 4 -5 pm (again, for some it’s just a coffee break)
- Between 5 and 6 PM, it’s Tahricha time: a snack like a sandwich, Fricassee, or nuts, and an excuse to meet friends after work or on weekends. This is not an everyday custom, but a pleasant exception
- Dinner is around 8-9 pm (a little earlier in Winter, a little later in Summer).
Five Tunisian Eating Customs
Take your Time
Take your time for evaluating and selecting ingredients, for cooking, for setting the table, for getting the Harissa out, for actually savoring the food…
Cooking the Tunisian way is going to the farmer’s market instead of the cinema. Walking around in search of delicatessens (and carrying the actual bags) instead of hitting the gym. Slicing tomatoes instead of watching TV, or better, while watching it, with ‘Choufli Hal’ playing.
The family then gathers at the table and enjoy the delicacy of the Tunisian cuisine.
Listen to your Suppliers
By suppliers, we refer to the butcher, the greengrocer, the fishmonger…
These people are experts and an inexhaustible source of knowledge and inspiration. And as many of us, they like to share their wisdom, they just need to be questioned.
Sometimes they will provide you with a tip, sometimes a whole recipe. And there’s a plus: next time they will remember your face, and give you the best piece of meat, the freshest catch, or the tastiest vegetables.
Opt for Fresh & Seasonal Ingredients
Fruit and vegetables, and also fish, are cheaper, tastier and healthier, when in season.
One should opt for local and seasonal foods. Doing so, this means choosing ingredients at their peak ripeness and freshness. Locally sourced produce spends less time in transit, retaining higher nutritional value and flavor.
Not only your food will taste better; it’s full of flavor and healthier. There is nothing better than having a delicious orange in winter or that sweet fig in summer.
A lot of Spices, Herbs, Onion, & Garlic
Try the Tunisian Shakshouka.
Try sprinkling it with salt.
Try cooking it after you’ve sauteed a garlic clove in the pan.
Try seasoning it with finely chopped parsley or chives.
You could spend a lifetime just trying Shakshuka in different ways, and only using spices and herbs.
If you put a garlic clove, a few slices of lemon and a sprig of parsley inside the tummy of a fish you are going to bake or grill, you will get a marvelous result. The flesh will be exalted by these aromas, you won’t sense them immediately, but only after chewing a bit. First comes the fish, then the aromas. If not, why spend all that money of freshly caught, non-farm-raised fish? That’s what you paid for, you are cooking it to make it digestible and tastier, not to upset it into something else.
HARISSA Goes with Everything
Harissa matters! It is the magic band that gives a dish personality. Tunisians just love it, and they can’t digest most of their dishes without it.
Made with hot chilli peppers, garlic, oil and spices, Harissa is a seriously tasty, fairly mild Tunisian chilli paste that can do incredible things to any meal.
Suggested Reads:
- 7 Things You Didn’t Know about Tunisian Food
- Eating Well, Driving Badly, & Daily Naps: The Habits You Pick Up in Tunisia
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