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Flexi-Recipe: Seasonal Vegetable Tagine
18th June 2025
We adore tagines for how they can embolden vegetables with otherwise mundane flavors – think potatoes – with the boldness of North African spices. Plus, they are an easy preparation for dozens of vegetable combinations, meaning you can choose in-season or surplus produce based on what’s available any time of the year. Tagines can make the most of vegetabels available all summer, but their use for startchy root vegetabels in winter, combined with the bold spices, make us frequently select this as one of our favorite “winter warmer” dishes. No matter the season, you can make it work.
Tagines come to us from Morrocco where they are the staple of the local diet. Think of them as a type of vegetable stew, often served with chicken or lamb, but they can be fully vegetarian and vegan as well. The name of the dish comes from the tagine – a type of earthenware pot – used for cooking them the traditional way in Morocco.
We explore the vegetable only version here as the epitome of a flexi-recipe. choose a mix of hard and soft vegetables for your vegetable tagine based on what’s in season. For instance, at the time of publication (summer), we might choose carrots as the hard vegetable and fresh corgettes as the soft vegetable (cauliflower and brocolli are also great choices), and use fresh tomatoes for the dish as they become available in July. Come winter potatoes and squahes can be combined with tinned tomoatoes for a hearty winter version.
Recipe tips
Any stock will do, but if you have none you can also add a teaspoon of Marmite to 2 cups of water for a hearty liquid.
You can use any seasonal vegetables in this dish: try a variety of starchy roots like turnips, celeriac, carrots, parsnips, or sweet potato. You can also use soft veg such as : courgettes, squash, broccoli, and beans.
Try adding a can of chickpeas or butter beans for protein.
Yield: 4 servings
Flexi-Recipe: Seasonal Vegetable Tagine
Prep time
20
Cooking time
20
Total time
40
Save PDFIngredients
- Fat (oil, butter, bacon grease, or lard)
- 1 onion, peeled and diced
- 1 tin of chopped tomatoes or a cup of fresh tomatoes
- Seasonal root veg, peeled and diced
- Seasonal soft veg washed and diced
- 2 cups of stock
- Spices and Seasoning:
- Black pepper
- Salt
- A sachet of Harissa paste
Instructions
- Wash and prep your vegetables.
- Heat 2 tablespoons of fat in a large pan.
- Add onion and tomatoes if using and cook until softened, then add the Harissa paste and stir well.
- Add any root vegetables to your pan and coat them in the paste.
- Add 2 cups stock. Stir well.
- Cover the pan with a lid (or a plate or foil if you don’t have one) and cook for 8-10 minutes or until the root veg are almost cooked.
- Add any soft vegetables and season with a little salt and pepper. Cook for 2 more minutes.
- Transfer the contents of the pan into an ovenproof dish and cook for 15 minutes at gas mark 6 or 200 degrees.
- Serve over quinoa, couscous, or rice or with some chunky bread.
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Flexi-Recipe: Seasonal Vegetable Tagine
Take this season’s freshest vegetables and make this moderately spiced Moroccan stew any time of year.
