Khlii substitutes

Khlii's technique compressed into one afternoon, minus the sun-drying step.

Best for

khlii ou baid (khlii with eggs), lentil and bean dishes, tagines, stuffed msemen, rice

The closest you will get, and honestly close. Rub the strips with the salt, spices and crushed garlic and refrigerate overnight, then simmer them fully submerged in beef fat, ghee or neutral oil at a bare 200 to 220F until they pull apart, two to three hours. What you skip is the drying, which is what concentrates real khlii's flavour to its intensity, so this tastes a little less potent and more like tender braised beef. Important: this is a same-week cooking ingredient, not a preserved one. Keep it refrigerated and use it within a week or freeze it.

Salt-cured pork, crisped in its own fat, covering the salt-and-fat job.

Best for

khlii with eggs, lentils, rice and couscous, quick weeknight versions

The best pantry answer, and the choice of cure matters more than the choice of animal. Khlii tastes of cumin, garlic and concentrated beef, with no smoke at all, so sweet-cured smoked supermarket bacon sends the dish toward American breakfast rather than Morocco. Unsmoked pancetta or plain salt pork avoids that. Adding cumin and garlic to the rendered fat closes most of the remaining gap. It is pork, so it will not suit every table.

North African lamb sausage spiced with cumin, coriander, garlic and harissa.

Best for

khlii ou baid, lentils and chickpeas, tagines, stuffed breads

Not preserved, obviously a sausage, and still the most enjoyable substitute for many dishes, because it lands in exactly the right flavour neighbourhood: lamb, cumin, coriander, garlic and chilli. Squeeze it out of the casing and crumble it so it distributes like shredded khlii rather than sitting in coins. It is much moister and softer, and the harissa makes the dish spicier than khlii would, so go easy on any other chilli. For khlii with eggs it is genuinely excellent.

Dried salted beef, the nearest thing in kind on an ordinary shelf.

Best for

lentils and beans, tagines, rice dishes, soups

Better than it sounds, because dried salted beef strips are conceptually what khlii is. Two conditions: it must be plain, since most supermarket jerky is sweetened with sugar or honey and heavily smoked, both of which are wrong here; and you must add fat, because jerky is bone dry and khlii's rendered spiced fat is half of what the dish tastes of. Soak it, chop it small, and warm it in the fat with cumin and garlic before the other ingredients go in.

Salted air-dried beef, the closest match in method if not in seasoning.

Best for

eggs, salads and warm grain bowls, lentils, quick pan dishes

The nearest relative in kind: salted, air-dried beef with concentrated flavour. The differences are leanness and seasoning. Bresaola is very lean and delicate, with a clean, faintly winey and juniper-scented flavour rather than khlii's cumin-heavy funk, and because it is sliced rather than pulled it stays in flat pieces instead of shredding. Chop it into short strips, warm it gently in fat with cumin, and do not let it fry hard or it turns leathery.

Meat cooked and stored in its own fat, exactly khlii's preservation logic.

Best for

lentils, eggs, rice and grain dishes, tagines

The technique is essentially identical, meat cooked slowly and stored sealed under its own fat, and the shreddy texture is right, which no other shop-bought option manages. Where it departs is flavour: it is rich, poultry-savoury and unspiced, so the dish tastes French rather than Moroccan until you add cumin and garlic. Use the fat from the tin as your cooking fat, which is very much in the spirit of khlii, and salt at the end since confit is already seasoned.