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Khlii substitute

Best substitute

Homemade beef confit

1 lb (450 g) beef chuck cut in strips, 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp coriander, 3 garlic cloves, cooked submerged in fat 2 to 3 hours; use 1:1

Best for khlii ou baid (khlii with eggs)

Close match

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

Other khlii substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

Substitutes for Khlii with ratios

  1. 2Unsmoked pancetta or salt-cured bacon, diced and crisped

    Taste and texture differ

    Use the same amount by weight, plus ½ tsp ground cumin and 1 crushed garlic clove per 4 oz

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

    What changes
    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.

  2. 3Merguez sausage, casing removed and crumbled

    Taste and texture differ

    Use the same amount by weight

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

    What changes
    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.

  3. 4Plain unsweetened beef jerky, rehydrated

    Taste and texture differ

    Use the same amount by dry weight, soaked 20 minutes in warm water, plus 1 tbsp beef fat or olive oil per 4 oz

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

    What changes
    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.

  4. 5Bresaola or air-dried beef, chopped and warmed in fat

    Taste and texture differ

    Use the same amount by weight, plus 1 tbsp fat and ½ tsp cumin per 4 oz

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

    What changes
    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.

  5. 6Duck or goose confit, shredded

    Different taste

    Use the same amount by weight, plus ½ tsp cumin and salt to taste

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

    What changes
    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.

What is Khlii?

Khlii is Khlii, also written khlea, khliaa or khlii beldi, is Moroccan preserved meat: strips of beef or lamb cured with salt, garlic, cumin and coriander, dried in the sun, then slow-cooked and stored submerged in their own rendered fat.

Cooking tips

  • Khlii is stored under its own fat and Moroccan recipes cook with spoonfuls of that fat, not just the meat. Whatever you substitute, add a tablespoon of beef fat, ghee or good olive oil to the pan, or the dish will taste lean and thin in a way you cannot fix with more meat.
  • Cumin and garlic, not smoke, are khlii's signature. This is the single most useful thing to know when substituting, because the obvious swap, supermarket bacon, is both smoked and sweet-cured and drags the dish toward American breakfast. Choose unsmoked pancetta or plain jerky and season the fat with cumin.
  • The texture is shredded and stringy rather than sliced. Pull or chop your substitute into short threads so it distributes through lentils, eggs or rice the way khlii does, instead of sitting in distinct lumps that read as a different ingredient.
  • Khlii is salty enough to season a whole dish on its own, so salt at the very end. This matters most in lentils and tagines, where the liquid reduces and concentrates whatever salt is already in the pot.
  • In khlii ou baid, the meat and its fat go into the pan first and the eggs are cracked straight in on top, and the point is that the eggs cook in the spiced fat. Do not drain the fat off, and keep the heat low so the eggs stay soft.

Frequently asked questions

What does khlii taste like?

Intensely beefy and salty, with a strong cumin and garlic character and a deep, almost fermented savoury edge from the drying, on a stringy shredded texture rather than a sliceable one. Because it is stored in fat, it always arrives with a rich, spiced tallow that carries much of the flavour. If you have eaten Moroccan lentils or eggs cooked with khlii, that dark savoury depth in the background is what it contributes.

Can I just leave khlii out?

It depends how central it is. In a lentil dish or a tagine where khlii is one flavouring among many, you can leave it out and compensate with extra salt, a tablespoon of good fat and half a teaspoon of cumin, which covers most of what it was doing. In khlii ou baid, khlii with eggs, the dish is named after it, so omitting it leaves you with fried eggs. In that case use crumbled merguez or crisped pancetta with cumin rather than skipping it.

How long does khlii keep, and can I make it at home safely?

Traditional khlii keeps for many months at room temperature, and it does so because of three barriers working together: a heavy salt cure, thorough drying, and an airtight seal of solidified fat over the meat. Those are not optional flourishes. Reducing the salt or shortening the drying removes exactly the protections that make it safe to store unrefrigerated, so do not improvise on quantities in a recipe you intend to keep at room temperature. For home curing and drying, follow tested guidance such as the USDA's National Center for Home Food Preservation. The quick confit version described above is not shelf stable at all: refrigerate it and use it within about a week, or freeze it.

Is khlii the same as smen?

No, though they are often stored side by side in Moroccan larders and both are preserved with salt. Khlii is preserved meat. Smen is preserved fermented butter, salted and aged until it is pungent and cheesy, used to enrich couscous and tagines. Some khlii recipes use smen or the khlii fat interchangeably as a cooking fat, which is where the confusion comes from, but they are not substitutes for one another.

Where can I buy khlii?

Essentially nowhere outside Morocco and a small number of North African shops, mainly in France, because it is a homemade larder preserve rather than a commercial product and it faces meat import restrictions in most countries. That is exactly why substitution questions come up around it. If you want the real flavour, making a spiced beef confit at home is more realistic than finding it for sale.

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