What Moroccan grilled meats and brochettes are there?

The smell finds you before the stall does — charcoal smoke threading through the medina, sweet with grilling fat and cumin. The everyday hero is the brochette: skewers of meat marinated in garlic, cumin, paprika and coriander, then grilled hard over coals. Lamb is classic, chicken is common, and the bravest order liver skewers (kebda) wrapped in caul fat, which crisp at the edges and melt in the middle. They arrive with bread, a saucer of cumin-salt and fiery harissa to dab on.

Kefta brochettes are my personal weakness: minced lamb or beef kneaded with grated onion, parsley, cumin and a warm hit of paprika, pressed onto skewers and grilled until juicy and a little charred. Tucked into a batbout pocket with chopped tomato and harissa, it is the best street sandwich in the country. Alongside them you will often see merguez, slim spicy lamb sausages stained red with paprika and chilli, blistering and spitting over the fire.

For the grand occasion there is mechoui — a whole lamb rubbed with butter, cumin and salt and slow-roasted for hours, sometimes in a sealed earthen pit, until the meat is so tender it is pulled apart by hand. In Marrakech the mechoui alley near the souks serves it by weight, with bread, cumin and salt, eaten standing up. It is primal, succulent and unforgettable; the celebratory cousin of the everyday skewer.

My advice: choose a grill stall with a queue and a fast turnover so the meat is fresh off the coals, ask for it bien cuit if you prefer it well done, and do not be shy with the cumin-salt — it is the seasoning that makes everything sing. On our culinary nights I take guests to a charcoal grandmaster in the medina, then to the mechoui specialists — two ends of Morocco’s live-fire spectrum.