Palestinian Cuisine: Traditional Dishes and Recipes to Start With

Palestinian cuisine is the home cooking of the Levant as it is made in Palestine: bread, olive oil, za'atar, sumac, lentils, rice, yogurt and seasonal vegetables, with chicken or lamb for the main meal. Its best-known traditional dishes are musakhan, maqluba, mansaf, mujaddara, falafel, hummus and the cheese pastry knafeh.

This guide explains what makes Palestinian food distinct, names the dishes worth knowing, and gives you a simple Palestinian recipe to cook first. Two related guides go further: the Palestinian breakfast table and a full molokhia recipe.

What defines Palestinian cuisine?

Three things run through almost every meal: olive oil, bread and a short list of sharp, earthy seasonings. The Palestinian Ministry of Tourism describes the smell of taboon bread baking in the morning as a marker of the countryside. Taboon is a flatbread baked on hot stones; other everyday breads are kmaj (a round, thicker flatbread), shraq (paper-thin) and ka'ak, the sesame-coated bread associated with Jerusalem.

Za'atar is both a wild herb and the mix made from it. Britannica notes there is no standard recipe: most blends start with dried thyme, oregano or marjoram, then add ground sumac for sourness, toasted sesame seeds and salt. Sumac on its own, a tart dark-red powder, seasons onions, chicken and salads.

Food also changes by region. The hills of the West Bank and the Galilee lean on olive oil, bread, yogurt and greens. Gaza, on the coast, cooks hotter and sourer, as described below. For the wider picture of customs and daily life, see our guide to Palestinian culture.

Traditional Palestinian dishes to know

These are the dishes most Palestinian families would name first. Descriptions follow the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism's own guide to the cuisine.

• Musakhan: taboon bread layered with onions cooked soft in olive oil and sumac, topped with roast chicken. The name means something that is heated. It celebrates the new season's olive oil and is eaten with the hands.
• Maqluba: the name means upside down. Lamb or chicken, rice and fried vegetables such as eggplant, cauliflower, potato and tomato are cooked in one pot, which is then flipped onto a tray. It is served with plain yogurt or a chopped salad.
• Mansaf: lamb cooked in a sauce of jameed, a dried fermented yogurt, served over flatbread and rice and scattered with almonds and pine nuts. It has Bedouin roots and is best known as Jordan's national dish; UNESCO inscribed it for Jordan in 2022. Palestinians cook it too, especially for weddings and large gatherings.
• Qidreh: the dish of Hebron. Lamb or chicken is cooked slowly with rice, garlic and chickpeas in a brass pot, traditionally in a wood-fired oven.
• Maftoul: the Palestinian form of couscous, hand-rolled from bulgur and wheat flour. The word comes from the Arabic for rolled or twisted.
• Mujaddara: lentils and rice cooked together and finished with onions fried in olive oil. Cheap, filling and meat-free, it is everyday food across the region.
• Falafel and hummus: falafel in Palestine is made from soaked raw chickpeas ground with onion, garlic, parsley and spices, then deep-fried. Hummus is cooked chickpeas blended with tahini, lemon and garlic. Both are eaten at breakfast as much as at any other time.
• Molokhia: a garlicky stew of jute mallow leaves, usually with chicken and rice. Our molokhia recipe has the full method.

What is sambusek?

Sambusek (also spelled sambousek or sambusak) is a small filled pastry: a round of dough folded into a half-moon around a filling, sealed and then fried or baked. Common fillings are spiced ground meat with onion, or white cheese. The Palestinian chef Sami Tamimi compares it to the samosa, the empanada and the Cornish pasty, and calls sambusek the Palestinian way of wrapping a filling in pastry; he notes they are traditionally fried.

It sits alongside other baked goods from the same oven: manaeesh, flatbread topped with za'atar and olive oil, and sfiha, a small open pie of dough topped with ground lamb and tomato or pepper.

The food of Gaza

Gaza has its own kitchen within Palestinian cuisine. Laila El-Haddad, co-author of the cookbook The Gaza Kitchen, lists its dominant flavors as dill (fresh and as seed), hot peppers, garlic, cumin, souring agents such as lemon, sour plums and sour pomegranate juice, red tahina made from roasted sesame, chard, squash and maftoul.

She explains why the cooking is so layered: in 1948 Gaza's population roughly tripled as displaced Palestinians arrived from villages, coastal towns and cities, each bringing their own dishes. Two examples are dagga, a fiery salad of tomatoes, chilies, dill and garlic pounded in a clay bowl called a zibdiya, and sumagiyya, a spicy meat stew named for the sumac that sours it.

Palestinian sweets: knafeh and ma'amoul

Knafeh is the best-known Palestinian dessert and is tied to the city of Nablus. Fine strands of pastry or semolina dough are baked around a layer of soft white cheese, traditionally Nabulsi cheese, then soaked in sugar syrup and topped with crushed pistachios. The Nablus version, knafeh Nabulsiyeh, is known for its orange-colored top.

Ma'amoul are semolina shortbread cookies filled with dates or nuts. They are made for Eid al-Fitr and for Easter, which says something about a cuisine shared by Muslim and Christian Palestinians alike.

Palestinian recipes: how to start cooking at home

You do not need special equipment to cook Palestinian food. Stock five things: good extra virgin olive oil, sumac, za'atar, tahini and allspice. Add onions, lemons, rice, lentils, chickpeas and flatbread and you can make most of the dishes above.

Musakhan is a good first recipe because it is simple and tastes like nothing else. This short version serves four and takes about an hour and a quarter. It is adapted from a home recipe published by Palestine in a Dish.

• 1. Rub 4 chicken legs with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, the juice of half a lemon, 1 tablespoon of sumac, 1 teaspoon of allspice, half a teaspoon of cinnamon, salt and pepper.
• 2. Roast skin side up at 350°F (180°C) for 50 to 60 minutes, until the skin is brown and the meat is cooked through.
• 3. While the chicken roasts, chop 3 red onions and cook them gently in about 6 tablespoons of olive oil for 10 to 15 minutes until soft and sweet. Season with salt, pepper and another tablespoon of sumac.
• 4. Spread the onions and their oil over 4 flatbreads and put them under a hot broiler for 2 to 3 minutes.
• 5. Set a piece of chicken on each bread, sprinkle with more sumac and toasted pine nuts or almonds, and serve with plain yogurt and a chopped salad.

Food and family in Gaza today

Every dish here is meant to be shared. Maqluba is flipped in front of the whole family; musakhan is torn and eaten by hand from one tray. Cooking for others is how Palestinian households mark Fridays, Eid, weddings and the olive harvest.

Many families in Gaza cannot cook these meals now. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) snapshot published in July 2026 found that more than 1.2 million people in Gaza, 59 percent of the population, faced crisis-level food insecurity or worse between mid-April and June 2026, and projected that figure to rise to more than 1.4 million by December 2026. It also found that food aid rations remained too small to support an adequate and varied diet.

Fight for Palestine funds food parcels and hot meals through local partner teams. You can read how that works on our Gaza food aid page, or give directly to the food assistance campaign.