Jben substitutes

Mild, lightly salted fresh cheeses that crumble rather than melt.

Best for

Moroccan breakfast with bread and honey, salads, briouat and pastry fillings, stuffing for msemen

The best all-purpose swap, because these are the cheeses closest to jben in the two ways that matter most: they are only lightly salted and they are mild enough to sit under honey and olive oil without fighting. Both are drier and firmer than jben, which is why the splash of milk helps; mash with a fork until it looks loose and moist rather than crumbly-dry. Flavour-wise it is a very close call, slightly cleaner and less tangy than jben but nobody will complain.

The real thing, made with two ingredients and a piece of cloth.

Best for

authentic texture and salt level, breakfast plates, pastry fillings, salads

Heat the milk to about 185F, just below a simmer, stir in the lemon juice, take it off the heat and let it sit ten minutes until the curds separate cleanly from greenish whey. Line a sieve with cheesecloth or a clean tea towel, drain one to two hours depending on how firm you want it, then salt lightly. This is functionally jben, and closer than any purchase, since the whole distinctive quality of jben is being very fresh, barely salted and slightly wet. Save the whey for bread dough.

Soft fresh curd cheese, the closest match in texture and mildness.

Best for

pastry and briouat fillings, spreading on bread, baked dishes, desserts with honey

The texture match is excellent, and the two adjustments are what make it work. Ricotta is completely unsalted and slightly sweet, so without salt it tastes of nothing next to olives and honey, and without the lemon it lacks jben's faint sourness. Drain it in a sieve for an hour if the tub is wet, because ricotta carries far more free liquid than jben, and wet cheese ruins pastry. Whole milk ricotta, not part-skim, which is grainy and chalky.

Soft, tangy fresh cheese, widely available and often the closest in style.

Best for

Moroccan breakfast with honey and olive oil, salads, spreading on khobz, warm vegetable dishes

A good and easy choice with one clear caveat: supermarket chevre is considerably saltier and tangier than jben, with a distinct goaty note that can dominate a plate. That is welcome against honey and olive oil, where the sharpness is a pleasure, and less welcome in a delicate salad or pastry filling where jben was meant to stay in the background. Some Moroccan jben is itself goat's milk, so this is not a departure from tradition, only from mildness.

Brined white cheese, de-salted to bring it closer to jben's gentleness.

Best for

cooked fillings, salads, baked pastries, crumbling over vegetables

Do not skip the soak. Straight from the brine, feta is several times saltier than jben and has a sharp, slightly sour brine bite that turns a Moroccan breakfast into a Greek salad. Half an hour in cold water, changed once, makes it usable, and soaking in milk instead softens the flavour more gently still. Even then it stays firmer and more crumbly than jben, so it works best where the cheese is cooked or crumbled rather than spread.

Strained yoghurt, thick and spreadable, with a pronounced cultured tang.

Best for

spreading on bread, breakfast plates with olive oil, dips, dolloping onto warm dishes

Excellent for the spreading job and wrong for anything that needs body. Labneh is smooth and creamy with no curd structure at all, so a breakfast plate becomes silky rather than crumbly, and the yoghurt sourness is noticeably stronger than jben's mild tang. It also weeps in a hot pastry and will not hold its shape in a briouat. Where the recipe says to crumble the cheese, choose something else; where it says to spread it, labneh is a pleasure.