What Moroccan soups are there?

Harira is Morocco’s soul in a bowl. It is a velvety tomato-based soup thickened with lentils, chickpeas and a flour-water binder called tedouira, loaded with celery, coriander and parsley, and brightened at the end with lemon. I first had it at sundown during Ramadan, served the moment the call to prayer ended, alongside dates and chebakia — the contrast of savoury soup and honeyed cookie is deliberate and wonderful. Outside Ramadan it is everywhere, year-round, simmering in cafés and homes.

For something rustic and warming, bissara is the one to seek in the cooler months, especially around Fez and the north. It is a thick purée of dried split peas or fava beans, blended smooth, then served in a wide bowl with a generous well of olive oil poured into the centre and a heavy dusting of cumin and chilli. Workers eat it for breakfast with bread; it is cheap, filling and quietly delicious, the kind of food that warms you from the inside on a grey morning.

Chorba is the lighter, brothier option — a clear-ish vegetable soup with fine vermicelli or fine pasta, sometimes with a little meat, seasoned with the usual coriander and tomato. It is gentler than harira and often what you will be offered as a starter at a family lunch. You may also meet local variations thickened with cracked wheat or barley in the countryside.

My advice: order soup as a starter to understand a region’s pantry, and always take the bread that comes with it — Moroccans dip rather than spoon. A squeeze of lemon transforms harira; do not skip it. On our culinary trips I take guests to a no-frills harira specialist where the pot has not stopped simmering in years, then to a bissara stand at dawn — two soups, two completely different Moroccos.