Español
  Français

Food, eating habits and cusine of Yemen

You are here: Countries / Yemen

A typical Yemeni hospitality involves an Arab cuisine.  Their traditional foods are just simple but mostly prepared with fresh ingredients.  Most of the foods are full of spices and a lot of times fiery hot.  Yemenis take pride in the nutritional value they serve with their food especially during lunch time which they consider the biggest meal of the day.  Dinners are mostly light meals.  They like meat, vegetable, bread dipped in sauce and fruits.

Typically, each region in Yemen has its own delicacy, but, it is believed that their national food is salta, a dish of meat broth with a native ingredient called fenugreek.  Throughout the country, it is served and eaten.

All kinds of breads can be found with different flavors, shapes and sizes.  One of their favorite is bread made from barley called malvj.  It would not be surprising to find bread stuffed with different kinds of meat.  They even have a popular hot relish dip called zhug which is a mixture of chilies and hot pepper seasoned with cardamom, caraway, coriander and garlic, all fresh, for their bread.

Meat is also available in Yemen.  They like lamb, goat, chicken and fish all over the country.  The only problem is that they have a scarcity of these meats that most of the Yemeni families usually have meat once a week.  In fact, many meals are based from the bones in meat stock.

Coffee in Yemen is somewhat expensive.  So the people prefer qishr, a drink made from coffee bean shells with cinnamon and ginger. Tea is served with or without milk.  Alcoholic beverages are not readily available, in accordance to the Quran.