Vegan Moroccan Chickpea Tagine With Carrots And Harissa

This recipe for Moroccan chickpea tagine is a hearty, warming dish that is straightforward to make, using minimalistic ingredients in a tagine on the stove. It’s a vegan dish full of nutrients and vitamins, making it a healthy addition to your midweek meals. 

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Tools For This Recipe:

• Uno Casa Tagine Pot: Buy direct from Uno Casa and receive a coordinating dual oven mitt, and a recipe book. Holds 3.65 quarts making it perfect for families. The exterior is made from durable and chip-resident enamel. Use this link to save 15% on all UnoCasa products. Discount applied at checkout.
• Garlic press: We have the Zulay garlic press and love it. No need to even peel the garlic.
• Oxo 3 Piece Peeler Set: Includes a red tomato peeler to peel the skins from the tomatoes plus an easy-to-use peeler for carrots.
• Tongs: These silicone-tipped kitchen tongs make moving the carrots and vegetables around super easy.

Recipe Information:

Vegetarian | Vegan | Cooks In Less Than One Hour | Authentic Moroccan

Moroccan Chickpea Tagine

This Moroccan carrot and chickpea tagine recipe is one of our favorite dishes to recreate after falling in love with Moroccan food during a trip to the country. 

I love to learn what great dishes I can make that are inspired by the food we eat when traveling. Moroccan dishes are often made using fundamental ingredients such as carrots and chickpeas, whether salads, stews, or soups. And, most Moroccan dishes include cumin, which is my secret ingredient in almost anything I cook.

I love making tagines and often make them using a variety of meats until one day, I thought, why not try out a vegetarian Moroccan tagine? I’m glad I did. It works well and is packed full of flavor. 

If you are not a vegetarian, check out some of our other tagine recipes, including Moroccan Lamb Shank Tagine With Apricots and Moroccan Kefta Tagine With Eggs Recipe.

How to Cook Using a Moroccan Tagine

To make this Moroccan chickpea tagine recipe, you will need a tagine, a specific cooking pot that goes directly onto the stove. Tagines are great in many Moroccan dishes because they mean everything can be cooked using one pot. You can also serve straight out of your tagine by placing it in the center of your table as a sharing dish. 

I first learned how to use a tagine in cooking when I visited Morocco. We even went to see a place where they’re made and got a tour of the facility, which was incredible. We learned how the tagines themselves were made and decorated. 

After learning all about tagines, and the kind of dishes that are cooked in them, I decided to bring some of my new knowledge back home with me and bring some of the flavors of Morocco to our kitchen. One of the dishes I came up with was this vegetarian Moroccan tagine. 

Moroccan Vegan Tagine Ingredients

Chickpeas, carrots, and other staple ingredients such as olive oil, onions, and garlic are commonly used in Morocco.

It would be best if you minced the garlic and finely diced the onions for this dish. This means you won’t have large pieces of garlic or onion in the finished dish. 

The Spice 

As with many Moroccan recipes, this dish uses cumin and turmeric as its main Moroccan spices. Cumin is such a popular ingredient in Morocco that they even have it on the table with salt and instead of pepper in many restaurants. 

This dish, in particular, also uses cinnamon and coriander. The cinnamon adds the right amount of sweetness to this dish and perfectly rounds off the other spices. 

Vegetables and Sauce

It’s down to preference whether you use canned or fresh tomatoes for the base of this chickpea tagine. Personally, I like to use beefsteak tomatoes, but either will work well and sometimes canned ones are better suited for convenience. They will need peeling and dicing before cooking if you’re using fresh.

The other element to the base of the sauce is the vegetable broth; of course, if you didn’t want this dish to be entirely vegan, you could use chicken stock instead, which also works well. 

The other vegetables used in the dish are the carrots and red bell pepper, which will be diced or peeled and quartered and laid on top of the tagine. Again, this is down to preference, but I prefer the latter; this is how I was taught in Morocco. 

If you like a bit of spice, try adding a bit of harissa chili paste to your dish, I find that it gives the tagine a really warm taste without being overly spicy. You can add it while cooking, or as a topping at the end.

Cooking A Vegan Chickpea Tagine

Pop your tagine on the stovetop over medium heat, and warm your olive oil. Then add the diced onions and garlic. Cook until they have softened, but don’t allow them to darken in color. 

Add in the cumin, cinnamon, turmeric, and coriander, stir everything together to combine the flavors, and release the aromas. 

Next, add the carrots and red pepper, along with the tomatoes. Season and add the vegetable stock. 

Cook the chickpea tagine over medium/low heat for 30 minutes; you want the carrots to be soft. 

After 30 minutes, carefully remove the lid from the tagine, and add the chickpeas and harissa. Cook for another 10 minutes, so the chickpeas get to temperature. You can have some fun with the decoration of the dish, like putting the carrots in a circle on the top of the dish before serving it on your table.

You can also garnish it with some fresh herbs and yogurt. I like to make harissa yogurt to go with ours. You can use a coconut yogurt if you are vegan. I also like to sprinkle a few dark raisins on the top to add texture, color, and a bit of sweetness.

Moroccan Chickpea Tagine Recipe