Berber breakfast porridge of barley flour, milk, and smen — humble, warming, the High Atlas's daily wake-up food.
Hssoua (sometimes called azkif) is the daily breakfast across Berber mountain villages — a thin barley-flour porridge cooked with water or milk and finished with a pungent dollop of smen. Sometimes wild herbs (zatar, mint) are stirred in. Eaten communally with each person dipping a piece of bread into the central pot.
A breakfast porridge of barley flour cooked smooth, finished in the Berber/Souss style with argan oil and a pungent dollop of smen, sometimes scented with wild thyme or mint.
Barley flour disperses and gelatinizes quickly into a smooth, thin porridge with little cooking. In the Souss the porridge is finished with locally pressed argan oil (the argan tree grows only in the Souss plain at the foot of the High Atlas); the fat carries the aroma of the smen and herbs and gives the lean grain a richer, warming body.
Variations
Berber High Atlas version uses barley flour finished with argan oil and smen; the Souss valley makes a thicker barley porridge called tagula; coastal versions enrich it with milk — three breakfast traditions.
On the Palate
Where Hssoua sits in the Moroccan flavor cloud
Ingredients
How it's made
5 steps · 1 hour
- 13 min
Whisk 100g barley flour with 300ml cold water in a heavy pot until smooth and lump-free.
Watch outWhisk the barley flour into cold water first until dead smooth — add flour to hot water and it seizes into lumps you can't beat out.
- 28 min
Add 700ml additional water, ½ tsp salt, and bring to a gentle boil over medium heat, stirring constantly to prevent sticking.
- 315 min
Reduce to low and simmer 15 minutes, stirring often, until thickened to a pourable porridge.
Watch outKeep stirring as it thickens to a pourable porridge — stop and the barley starch grabs the bottom and scorches, tainting the whole pot.
- 415 min
Stir in 200ml warm milk; cook another 5 minutes. Adjust salt.
- 52 min
Off heat, drop in 2 tsp smen (or substitute butter with a pinch of salt). Serve immediately in deep bowls, optionally drizzled with olive oil or honey.
Watch outDrop the smen in off the heat so its aroma blooms without cooking off — that fragrant fat is the whole point of the dish.
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