Digital Editions Newsletters

Keywords

Include Ingredients

✕

Exclude Ingredients

✕

EatingWell Magazine Subscribe Now!

Healthy Middle Eastern Recipes

Find healthy, delicious middle Eastern recipes including Lebanese, Israeli and Turkish recipes. Healthier Recipes, from the food and nutrition experts at EatingWell.

Tomato Dolma with Roasted Eggplant (Köz Patlicanli Domates Dolmasi)

Cucumber with Basil, Yogurt, Walnuts & Browned Butter (Yanik Tereyagli Cacik)

Double-Tahini Hummus

Chickpeas with Garlicky Yogurt & Toasted Pita (Fatteh Hommos)

Middle Eastern Mezze Recipes

Turkish, Lebanese and other Middle Eastern flavors star in these healthy recipes for appetizers, dinner, side dishes and more. Mezze, also spelled meze, means small plates to sharewhich are served similar to tapas. We like to serve these flavorful Middle Eastern recipes like tapas or as sides to shish kebabs, lamb, chicken or fish. Try the best hummus we've ever made, slow-roasted tomato sauce (Matbucha), cauliflower salad with walnuts and more with these healthy favorites.

Circassian Chicken (Çerkez Tavugu)

Tomato Dolma with Roasted Eggplant (Köz Patlicanli Domates Dolmasi)

Lamb & Walnut Gul Börek

Cucumber with Basil, Yogurt, Walnuts & Browned Butter (Yanik Tereyagli Cacik)

Healthy Turkish Recipes That Will Transport You to Istanbul

Turkish food has mastered savory and sweet dishes without using any traditional sweet ingredients, try out our Borrek recipe to taste it yourself. Many of these dishes play with flavors and combinations that we don't normally use in everyday cooking like, pickled cherries and eggplant, and cucumbers and yogurt. Turkish cuisine is one of the richest in the world because of the mix of cultures and styles it has adopted from countries like Egypt, Syria, Greece and Iraq.

Greens with Crispy Onions (Hendbeh b' Zeit)

Chard Stalks in Tarator (Dlou' Selee' Mtaballeh)

Chickpeas with Garlicky Yogurt & Toasted Pita (Fatteh Hommos)

Freekeh with Grilled Vegetables (Frikeh bel Khodra)

Healthy Lebanese Recipes to Give You a Taste of the Middle East

Taste the middle east through savory mezze dishes that have layered simple ingredients, with exciting spices to create dishes like, Pumpkin Kibbeh. Many Lebanese dishes include chickpeas or fava beans to create a spiced hummus or sauce, an important part of every Lebanese meal. Most dishes are vegetarian or use meat sparingly due to the traditional Levant style of cooking, red meat is uncommon but when used it is usually, goat or lamb.

ADVERTISEMENT

Persian Rice Pie (Tah Chin)

Oven-Roasted Fish with Onion, Lemon, Fenugreek & Cilantro (Mahi-e Shekam Por)

Grilled Liver Kebabs (Jigar)

Yogurt with Beets (Borani Chogondar)

Healthy Persian Recipes That Everyone Will Love

Try these daring Persian dishes that everyone will love, like Oven-Roasted Fish, Ginger-Melon Soup or Grilled Liver Kababs. All of these dishes include spices like saffron, mint and parsley to make every bite full of flavor. Persian recipes often call for fruit like plums or pomegranate to bring a natural sweetness to a dish. Its traditional for rice to be served with most meals, make sure to try our Persian Rice Pie with any of these dishes for a truly authentic meal.

Whole-Grain Salad with Charred Broccoli, Spring Onions & Parsley-Sumac Vinaigrette

For this easy healthy salad, chef Hugh Acheson shows the power of charring vegetables as a way to add interest to a salad. This flexible recipe can be made with a variety of whole grains, such as wheat berries, farro or pearl barley. The salad revels in the spring arrival of radishes, spring onions and bright green parsley. Sumac, which is commonly used in Middle Eastern cooking, adds a touch of tartness. Look for it in well-stocked spice sections at your market.

Gold Medal Moussaka

This Middle Eastern dish is most often made with ground meat and eggplant (or potatoes) and topped with a thick béchamel sauce. To reduce fat and calories, our makeover moussaka recipe uses fat-free milk, low-fat yogurt, and light ricotta cheese for the topping, but even with those subtitutions, it still delivers on taste!

White Bean Moussaka

Moussaka is a Middle Eastern baked main dish, typically made by layering slices of eggplant with a seasoned ground beef or lamb mixture. This protein-filled vegetarian version replaces the meat with white beans but will still delight any and all meat-eaters at your table.

Lemon Chicken & Rice

This easy Persian-inspired chicken and rice dish has a beautiful golden color and a wonderful fragrance. If you have saffron in the cupboard, do add that optional pinch; just a little will enhance the flavor and aroma of the dish.

ADVERTISEMENT

Lamb-Stuffed Eggplant

This Middle-Eastern-inspired dish uses just a small amount of lamb to stuff the eggplant, which keeps the saturated fat in check. It calls for cooked brown rice, which you can prepare up to a day ahead. Save time by using instant brown rice, which cooks in under 10 minutes.

Salted Caramel Pistachio-Apricot Baklava

This sweet dessert pastry is made with thin, flaky, buttery layers of phyllo dough and filled with sweet apricots, lightly salted pistachio nuts, and a bit of brown sugar. An apricot caramel sauce is drizzled over the cooled baklava and the entire dessert is sprinkled with coarse salt, providing a sweet and salty bang with each bite.

Peanut & Shrimp Soup

This Moroccan-inspired soup is made with roasted butternut squash and tomatoes, flavored with creamy peanut butter, and topped with zesty shrimp and julienned carrots. It's a beautiful appetizer to serve to guests--and they'll love the taste!

Air-Fryer Falafel

Making falafel in the air fryer is practically foolproof. Just combine all your ingredients in a food processor, form into patties and drop in the air fryer. The countertop appliance is like a mini convection oven, so the falafel will cook up quickly and with way less oil than if you pan-fried them. Serve them with tahini sauce for dipping (see associated recipe).

Falafel Burgers

Pureed chickpeas, seasoned with the characteristic flavors of falafel, make excellent veggie burgers. We use a two-stage method for cooking the patties, first browning them in a skillet and then finishing them in the oven. Garnish the burgers with tzatziki or tahini sauce (see associated recipes), pickled red onions, lettuce and tomatoes.

Persian Rice Pie (Tah Chin)

The bottom layer of this rice pie is all tahdig--the delectable, crispy golden rice that is the highlight of an Iranian meal. Cooking the pie on the stovetop before it goes into the oven gives the rice its signature crunch.

ADVERTISEMENT

Herbed Yogurt-Rice Soup

The grains of rice disappear into the yogurt as it's simmered and stirred, thickening the soup and giving it substance. Serve warm or chilled, depending on the weather.

Cucumber & Pomegranate Salad (Salad-e Khiar-o Anar)

A platter of herbs, scallions and feta is typically served alongside Persian meals in lieu of a Western-style green salad. They are meant to be folded into flatbread as an accompaniment to a meal (or sometimes as the meal itself). This salad is a riff on that, with pomegranate seeds and cucumbers mixed in.

Chicken Stew with Green Herbs & Citrus (Morgh-e Torsh)

This delicious chicken stew is traditionally made with sour oranges, which are prolific in Iran--if you find them, use the juice of two in place of the citrus called for here. Serve with rice to pair with the flavorful spinach sauce.

Grilled Liver Kebabs (Jigar)

Made with just about any kind of meat, kebabs are classic Iranian street food. Lamb is the predominant red meat eaten in Iran, and its liver is a delicacy. Lemon, garlic and fresh basil nicely balance the liver's mineral flavor.

Yogurt with Beets (Borani Chogondar)

Borani, a Middle Eastern yogurt dip, can be made with anything from spinach to eggplant to carrots. This recipe gets its shockingly pink color from grated beets. Make it ahead--the longer it sits, the better it tastes.

Oven-Roasted Fish with Onion, Lemon, Fenugreek & Cilantro (Mahi-e Shekam Por)

Cooking whole fish is easy--most fish markets sell them already cleaned and butterflied with the backbone and rib bones removed. (If not, ask the fishmonger to do it for you.) Leaving the head and tail intact makes them easy to work with--and the presentation at the table is impressive. A flavorful stuffing made with tangy tamarind and aromatic herbs is a great foil for the mild fish.

Greens with Crispy Onions (Hendbeh b' Zeit)

Wilted greens topped with fried onions is a mezze must. Bitter dandelion greens are the most flavorful, but chard or kale--really any green or a combination of them--tastes delicious.

Chickpeas with Garlicky Yogurt & Toasted Pita (Fatteh Hommos)

Fatteh means "broken" and signifies a dish of toasted bread pieces mixed with other ingredients. In this easy recipe, the yogurt is also "broken" with tahini, garlic and oil. Enjoy it immediately, before the crispy bread gets soggy from the yogurt.

Carob Molasses Cake (Sfouf b' Debs)

With all due respect to baklava, we've found a new favorite Lebanese dessert. This rich, moist cake is sweetened with carob molasses and has a hit of anise. We may or may not have fought over it in the Test Kitchen.

Pumpkin Kibbeh (Kebbet Laa'tin)

"Kibbeh" describes dishes made with bulgur, onions and spices. That mixture is combined with everything from tomatoes to goat. It's layered and baked, shaped into balls or footballs, stuffed, deep-fried or eaten raw. This vegetarian kibbeh recipe is made with pumpkin and stuffed with seasoned greens. Sorrel adds a lemony flavor, but you can use chard or kale and add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice to the filling. Use fine bulgur or the texture of the dough will be gritty.