Baghdad
Quzi: slow lamb, spiced rice, chickpeas.
Quzi
Quzi — festive slow-cooked lamb over spiced rice with chickpeas and raisins — is the Baghdadi celebration dish.
View page →Baghdad sits on the middle Tigris and was the Abbasid capital for a thousand years, giving Iraqi cooking its most refined table. The kitchen carries Arab, Persian, Turkic and Jewish layers: river fish, the rice and dates of the plain, the spices of the souk. Quzi is the celebration dish — a whole lamb slow-cooked until it falls off the bone, served over rice that has drunk the meat's broth, with chickpeas and raisins. Tashreeb soaks stale bread in rich meat broth until soft, a winter warmer from the Tigris banks. Marag is the family of tomato-and-spice meat stews eaten with rice or bread. The Baghdadi Jewish tbit — a whole chicken sealed with rice in one pot and slow-baked overnight for the Sabbath — is a Jewish-Arab inheritance found only here.
The Palate
Start Here
Whole lamb slow-cooked until falling, over rice that has drunk its broth, with chickpeas and raisins.
Why start here · The Baghdadi feast dish — the one you cook for a wedding.
Stale bread soaked in rich meat-and-chickpea broth until soft and savory.
Why start here · The Tigris winter table in one bowl.
Whole chicken sealed with rice and slow-baked overnight for the Sabbath — a Baghdadi Jewish inheritance.
Why start here · A dish you will not find anywhere but Baghdad.
The Pantry
See all 73 ingredients›
How They Cook
Techniques that define this cuisine
See 6 more techniques›
Kindred Kitchens
Cuisines built on the same signature ingredients
Other regions
Siblings within Iraqi — each its own tradition.
