Mansaf – The One Dish You Have To Eat in Jordan
Ask just about any Jordanian what food you have to try when you visit Jordan, and you’re pretty likely to hear mansaf as the top answer.
Mansaf is a dish of rice, lamb, and a dry yoghurt made into a sauce called jameed. It’s not only one of the the most beloved Jordanian foods, but it’s also considered the national dish of Jordan.
I’m not saying mansaf is the single dish you have to eat in Jordan (there are many other dishes you should try as well), but it’s the one dish – if you had to choose just one – that you don’t want to leave Jordan without feasting upon.
What is Mansaf?
There’s a certain Jordanian pride and significance that goes along with mansaf – and once you taste it, and experience a communal meal of it, you’ll know why.
Mansaf is a food that runs deep in the culture of Jordan, and when you take your first bite, you’ll actually taste Jordan.
Along with just being completely unique and delicious, mansaf is so important in Jordan that it’s been known to resolve conflicts and restore peace with tribes in Jordan – that’s the power of food. It’s also common to eat at Jordanian celebrations, parties, family get-togethers, and festivals.
There are only a few main components of any platter of mansaf; rice, lamb, jameed (more about this below), and lastly nuts and shrak (a type of bread) are also commonly present.
ball of jameed
THIS IS A BALL OF JAMEED
What is jameed?
The rice and lamb are both wonderful within the dish, but it wouldn’t be mansaf without jameed, a special dried and fermented goat yoghurt.
Jameed is Bedouin style dried and hardened laban, which is strained goat yoghurt, dried into hard balls. On top of Bedouin tents, you’ll often see balls of jameed dehydrating and hardening in the hot sun.
To make mansaf, the lamb is cooked in jameed, and the sauce, which goes along with the rice and lamb, is re-hydrated, and prepared into a thick gravy to go with the lamb and rice. The jameed gravy is salty, has a sour fermented yoghurt flavor, and you can definitely taste the goat in it.
best mansaf in Amman
MANSAF, SOLD BY THE KILO!
Tawaheen Al Hawa Restaurant
When my wife Ying and I were in Amman, Jordan, we went to a restaurant called Tawaheen Al Hawa (also known as Don Quixote), with a specific purpose to eat mansaf.
The restaurant is a huge institution in Amman, possibly one of the biggest restaurants in the city, with multiple dining rooms – it’s the type of restaurant that friends, and families, and party sized groups come to hang out, celebrate, and feast.
You might be interested in my Amman Travel Guide here.
Tawaheen Al Hawa, while they have an extensive menu of Jordanian food, including all the typical mezze dishes (hummus, moutabel, ful, tabbouleh etc.), the main dishes they are most famous for are mansaf and grilled meats, like kebabs. We came for the mansaf.
vegetables
VEGETABLE PLATTER TO BEGIN WITH
For most of our other meals in Jordan, we ate a whole bunch of appetizer dishes like hummus and moutabel prior to our main dishes, but when you eat mansaf, it’s customary to get straight to the main dish without messing around with all the dips and sides.
However, they did serve us a massive platter of fresh raw vegetables stacked up into a sculpture of colors. I loved how they included whole cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, purple cabbage, and even whole lemons tossed on the plate.
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