Mechoui

What it is

According to the study for WIPO and OMPIC, mechoui is the feast par excellence in Morocco, a legacy of nomads, herders and farmers with their own flocks, for whom slaughtering a sheep or a goat showed the host’s hospitality.¹ It is often served whole on a large oval platter big enough to hold the entire lamb.²

It is eaten with the right hand and three fingers, thumb, index and middle finger, without cutlery, because the way it is cooked lets the meat come easily off the bone.³ Small bowls of salt and cumin are set out so that everyone can season their own mouthfuls.⁴

How it is made

Mechoui is cooked in the neighbourhood oven, the farnatchi, where the terrah, the man who tends the oven, puts in bread, pastries, tanjia and mechoui, each at its own hour according to the heat.⁵ The other way is the pit, a vertical hole or an earthen oven in which wood first burns for hours; then the sheep cooks inside, sealed tight with clay.⁶

How it is cooked

When

The study names as occasions weddings, feasts, moussems, the Feast of the Sacrifice, festivals of the farming year such as the harvest, and family celebrations such as a birth and the naming on the seventh day.⁷