Moussaka is a traditional dish enjoyed in many countries in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, but it is most closely associated with Greek cuisine.
– The origins of moussaka can be traced back to the ancient civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean. Early dish versions likely existed in the Byzantine Empire and the Arab world, where eggplants, tomatoes, and spices were common ingredients.
– The Ottoman Empire, which spanned a large portion of Southeastern Europe, Western Asia, and Northern Africa, played a significant role in the culinary exchange across these regions. The Ottomans introduced eggplants and tomatoes to the Balkans and Greece, which became fundamental ingredients in moussaka.
– The dish as we know it today was popularized in the early 20th century by Greek chef Nikolaos Tselementes. Tselementes, influenced by French cuisine, added a béchamel sauce to the traditional layered eggplant and meat dish. This adaptation became the definitive Greek version of moussaka.
– The classic Greek version consists of layers of sautéed eggplant, a meat sauce made from ground lamb or beef, and a creamy béchamel sauce on top. It is baked until golden and bubbly.
Turkish Musakka:
– In Turkey, musakka is typically made with sautéed eggplant, green peppers, tomatoes, onions, and minced meat. Unlike the Greek version, it does not usually include a béchamel sauce and is often served as a stew rather than a casserole.
– Variations in the Middle East can differ significantly. In some countries, moussaka is made with a base of chickpeas and tomatoes, without any meat or béchamel sauce, and is served cold as a mezze (appetizer).
– In the Balkans, moussaka might include layers of potatoes, zucchini, and eggplant. The meat sauce is usually made from ground pork or beef; some versions include a yogurt-based topping instead of béchamel.
👇 RECIPE BELOW
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Ingredients
For the meat sauce:
– 2 tablespoons olive oil
– 1 large onion, finely chopped
– 2 garlic cloves, minced
– 500g ground lamb or beef
– 1 can (400g) diced tomatoes
– 2 tablespoons tomato paste
– 1/2 cup red wine – optional – I didn’t use any
– 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
– 1 teaspoon ground allspice
– 1 teaspoon dried oregano
– Salt and pepper to taste
– 1 bay leaf
For the eggplant:
– 2 large eggplants, sliced into 1cm thick rounds
– Salt
– Olive oil for brushing
For the béchamel sauce:
– 4 tablespoons butter
– 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
– 3 cups milk, warmed
– 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg – I didn’t use any
– Salt and pepper to taste
– 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
– 2 egg yolks – optional
Preheat your oven to 190°C (380°F)
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Cook 25 – 40 mins. Big difference in time – air fryer and oven –
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look at that that is superb hi everyone welcome to badf I’m Rick today we’re doing a Timeless classic we’re making musaka now I first had this 30 years 35 years ago in on the island of roads and it did not contain potatoes I’ve had it many many times afterwards and it does have potatoes in but the first one I ever had never had the potatoes it had a lot of oine and I’ve got these fantastic OB jein so today it’s musaka right the first job then we’ve got to prep these OB jein and these OB jeans need cutting into 1 cm pieces and some salt on let’s get on with it so it is straightforward take the end off put it down there and 1 cm pieces as easy as that okay we have have to be salting these up and they’re going to go Brown very quickly if we’re not careful get yourself a basket we’re going to stand them all up so the fluid runs off over there salt now we are using salt and the reason for salt it draws out the moisture and reduces the bitterness so turn them over Chu some more salt on from a great height that’s the easy whe well it’s all easy actually and then just stand up your oine and what will happen is that it will leak out the fluid into the bowl underneath I’m just wondering if we got to do another one just to be certain that we have enough we do this other one just to be certain so that is our first job done that is our eggplant or our oine salted and we just leave it for about 25 minutes 30 minutes one side once we clear away all this salt so for potatoes then I’ve got these fantastic potatoes I’ve washed them I’ve dried them they’ve got skins on I’m leaving the skins on we’re just going to slice them into 1 cm pieces and we are going to deep fry them or shallow fry in a pan I like fried potatoes we’re going to put to one side before we start cooking our meat mixture now you could do these in the oven if you so wished and have baked slices but you know for quickness and speed we are going to fry these whilst our obene is soaking the moisture out so straight on here then we want some 1 cm pieces okay so just get your pan on heat up your oil and we are going to put our sliced potatoes in there and give them a little bit of frying so they Brown up on both sides we’re going to take them out now they are going to be about probably 60% cooked 65 70% you know by the time we finished and then they’re going to finish off in the oven okay when you’ve got your oil hot enough we want to be going in there with our potato slices and our oil is at 180° now this is just a quick fry over the top now for the eagle light people there’s a couple of little brown specks on here look I was frying some chips just before I fried these so it’s just some sediment of the potatoes in here so it’s just a gentle stir we don’t want to actually get the potatoes stuck together and we need them to cook up now for those people who don’t want to actually fry the potatoes squirt some o on put it on a baking tray shove it in the oven bait them so there we are look the potatoes are started to lift that means they cook or cook sufficiently enough for us look at [Applause] those Okay cooking the filling is very very straightforward a little bit of oil in there I’m using olive oil I’m going in there with my garlic and onions we’re going to give that a little stir [Applause] just cook out that rawness a little bit and the rawness from the onions if you brown it not to worry it doesn’t matter salt I’m seasoning now and I’m going to add the meat but I want the onions to sweat down in here right that is pepper so just give it a little minute in there it doesn’t have to be cooked down for any length of time we just want that rawness gone and as soon as you get a bit of a Ting on there you know what it’s gone in with our mints start breaking your mints up in there turning it in let’s have it cooked and if you get color on the mints so be it that’s flavor don’t worry about that so in with our seasonings and there with some oregano give it a stirring so the mince takes on that flavor as it’s [Applause] cooking so we got our all spice in here and our cinnamon and our oregano with that little bit of salt and pepper so just keep giving it a little mix over turn it over cook off that raw beef in there now two tablespoons tomato puree or paste whatever you know it by and now we want to just stir this in and let it cook in there take that sourness off the tomatoes with the beef and onions Tomatoes tin tomatoes in with the Juice Stop anything from burning straight away and then as usual on here these are not chopped tomato so we’re going to chop them in the can with a pair of scissors save all the mess going everywhere by squashing them with our hands in there nice little stir through now we need to turn this down this is going at a quite a rate of knots at the moment we are after a thick sauce now you could put a lid on this and simmer this for about 15 to 20 minutes now we do want to be going in there with a bay leaf because we got small ones we’re going to go in with [Applause] two now now you want to be turning this down to a little simmer gentle simmer let all those flavors come together in there it’s nice and steady always I’m actually going to cook it uncovered just to thicken up quite quickly for my dish okay so once you’ve got a quite nice little thick sauce like that that is enough now we need to be coming out of there with those bay leaves we don’t want to leave those in so we’ll be taking those out and we did put two in so there’s another one hiding in here there it is so we want the beay leaves out and that’s it all we do we’re just going to turn off that’s got to cool down and we are going to rinse our our oine oil it up and cook it in the oven okay and you can see in there that is all the fluid out of the oine from the salt okay I’ve got a couple of trees here which I’m going to put in the oven I’m going to put one top and bottom because I’m use an air fryer oven I’m going to have to switch the trays over now we want a little bit of olive oil on on there on that tray this is the easiest way of doing this and then we’ll put some olive oil over the eggplants or oine in a second okay we need to be drying our eggplant our oine and all we’re doing is just drying it with some kitchen towel and this is where this olive oil comes into its own in the tray we do that okay we smear it all the way around and our eggplant is covered now don’t worry if you have to just overlap them slightly they are going to shrink a little bit and we can just move them around on the tray don’t worry about that we just have to make sure we have enough on our tray cooking so we’re want to stick the oven on I’m going on for 180 that’ll do Let It preheat we’re going over here with some more olive oil nice and steady over the top it’s got a bake on there we will be turning them halfway this is why we’re not bothered about if they’re slightly overlapping because they’re going to be turned over anyway okay so we’re just going to put that in the oven now I’ve set it for 12 minutes we’re going to cook this for about 20 minutes 25 minutes so if I set it for 12 pull them out turn them over stick them back in cook for another 12 that’s good enough okay so what we need to be doing now is we need to be flipping these over and changing over the trays they’re starting to cook quite nicely but we need to turn them all so turn them over so all we’ll do is just keep an eye on them we want color on uh if they’re not we just keep keep it in until we’ve got color that we need now this was the bottom one so that’s going on the top and this was the top one so this one’s going on the bottom okay these are good enough for me I don’t need them in any longer they’re cooked enough and they’ll have enough texture inside our musaka so when we make our mousaka there will be perfect l so we just need to put that to one side whilst we make a bachy mile sauce okay we’re making a proper batch of M sauce today we got a couple of tablespoons of butter in there look now the quick bat of M sauce is just corn flour and milk but we’re going to make a real one so whiz your butter around in there flame not too hot want to melt the butter slowly we’re not Browning the butter and then we’re going in there with some flour so we’ve got a couple of tablespoons in there well a couple of tablespoons of flour in there want to give it a little cooking in take out the rawness of the flour nice and steady that look now you can cook it to some really thick paste if you so wish that’s entirely up to you now we’re going to start adding a little bit of milk a bit more so we just give it a little stir we don’t want any l in there as you can see it start to thicken again in with a bit more milk we’re probably going to go that much in total actually that’ll be it and just bring it up warm it through until it starts to thicken now don’t rush this you know it will thicken up naturally without having to uh crank up the heat to actually make your bachal this is already thickening quite nicely and it’ll thicken a lot more in a minute when we Chu the parmesan in right we’re going to go in there with about that much paresan probably about a good half a cup somewhere around there and there you can see we have a perfect bachal no hassle nice and steady Flame Off okay this dish is very easy to put together I am going to line out the bottom with some potato now you could just line it out with obene if you wanted but I want that potato crust in the bottom then we’re going to go over the top of there with some oine nice little layer of orine on the bottom give it a little pat down and then we’re going on there with some of our meat mixture now it’s going to be a two layer job this so we’re going to get half this mixture in there and working in there let’s have that layer flattened on top of that oine just spread it out first and then squash in squash it down down we’re going to back in there with some more potato give it a squash into that meat mixture well that was a good guess now you can little secret seasoning in there a little bit of Parmesan now people don’t do this they normally save the Parmesan for the top but this way you get a bit of flavor coming through your mousaka on there little bit of meat mixture in squash we’re squashing down and bringing towards the edge okay we have a small dish but what’ll happen is the the bach your mouth sauce will run to the top of there but sit inside like a swimming pool so just bring to the edge and don’t worry about it you know the bachal sauce is going to go all over that side as well it starts cooking so you want to be getting your oven back on for about 25 minutes actually you know they always say 40 minutes or 40 5 minutes now that’s okay but if you’re using a little oven all this is already cooked so all we’re doing is bringing it together and crisping over the top we’re not trying to cook anything so come in the Middle with your sauce and then we’re just going to pull it to the sides because we know we got this swimming pool effect in the middle that we’ve just created to hold it in there you know because we have too much filling so all you do it’s going to Bubble over don’t worry about it bring it into the side like that and you what you’re going to have you’re going to have a really nice crusty side so there’s absolutely no stress don’t worry about it and we want to be going on there with some Parmesan that looks absolutely fabulous a little light dusting of pepper just to put those flakes in the top that’s all it ain’t going to Pepper it up any now for this sort of thing always on a tray always it will bubble it’s definitely going to Bubble over that’s this stuff inside’s already cooked but it’s going to heat up we’re just trying to put some color on the top so that is going in there now we’ve got it for about 20 minutes 24 minutes we’ll see what happens there we go look at that just done with a little bit of Parmesan and a little bit of P Ashley look at that that is superb oh just look in there what a fantastic bch Cel sauce on the top in through there through our layers oh look at that absolutely flipping amazing oh wow that is incredible that potato you know you got that potato we fried it we’ve got that lovely potato flavor the sauce is delicious bachel sauce hene M that is just such a fantastic dish I’m still eating I’m going to carry on if you like what we’re doing don’t forget the big thumbs up subscribe to the channel ring that Bell catch you in the next video
43 Comments
I rushed to the description to see whether the recipe includes cinnamon and allspice. Yes, that's the real stuff. 👍
I also belong to the faction that starts with a layer of potatoes at the bottom.
Looks so good! Liked the little bit of background on the dish, good job.
Finally I have learned how to cut and prepare eggplant, I have avoided eggplant due to all the tiny seeds which were nearly impossible to remove …. and as I have a supply of ground lamb meat I am going to prepare the moussaka that way.
I love moussaka!
My mother in the UK used to make this when i was a child and her moussaka is still the best i've ever eaten. She used huge big slices of potato so they retained alot of bite and flavour, chunky minced lamb, and plenty of white sauce. I always tried to replicate the way she made it but never quite achieved the rustic deliciousness she did.
I liked seeing you clean your plate, good work Rik.
Don't tell my Dad…but yours looks miles better than his Rik😋 decent filling! no scrimping on the ingredients
Pretty much as I make mine, mouth-watering Rik another winner, well done.
You forgot the nutmeg in the Béchamel!!!
My goodness Rik, I haven't made this in years. I truly love Moussaka, I might do this with some lamb that I bought. Mouth watering. Thanks Rik!
I always make mine with yoghurt instead of béchamel as it is a bit lighter but yours does look good
One of my staples, my family here in Cyprus usually use pork mince or pork and beef mix. I grow my own fruit and veg and my aubergines are in season so this will be made in next few days. Looks amazing Rik.
That is amazing. Thank you, Rik! Great cooking top tips as always. 👌
That looks delicious.
I love Moussaka! I had it in Rhoads as well, and Mykonos and on Santorini. IMO the Santorini was the best of the three. But they were all good. On Santorini there was a restaurant at the foot of the tram that had the most incredible fried calamari we have ever had! And a HUGE platter for pretty inexpensive.
I cheat and use a Greek herb mix from a Greek cafe. But otherwise just love this dish mmmmm
Ha! One learns something new every day! I thought Mousaka was a drink everyone drank and then danced around in a circle in Greece. now I know when I go to Greece, I eat moussaka…i don't drink it and then get up and start dancing around and making a fool of myself. Thanks for the heads up!
When you choose your eggplants, look at the blossom end, or the bellybutton. The ones with a slit are girls and full of bitter seeds. Choose the ones with the round bellybutton … they are the males. Less seeds. I always says the girls have slits and the boys have a**holes.
Aubergine and Eggplant are exactly the same thing, just different names used in different places. WHy do you call them Aubergine. The rest of the world calls them eggplant?
Did you have seconds? I woould have, looks delicious, thanks for sharing.
Fabulous 😊
I was taught a classic Greek way last year in a taverna on Corfu. The nana who cooked all the food used olive oil and carnation milk in the topping. I have never looked back
I’m Greek and this is exactly how mom used to make it
Interesting take on this. The recipe I had was very simple, no meat, just aubergines. Sauce was just onions cooked with cinnamon and tomato puree. The Bechamel had three eggs and the zest of a lemon in it. I put breadcrumbs and Parmesan on the bottom and between the layers with tomato sauce. Even my husband liked it, and he'd get a little bitchy about vegetarian meals. He'd dig this version no end. Thanks, Rik!!!
Ooh, you're getting fancy with the video editing. A little slo-mo slicing. I love it. ❤❤❤❤
I've missed you, rik. We had to bid farewell to my Aunt Cheryl. It was a long long drive, but im glad i was able to get there.
As one of Greek decent (father's side) – I approve!
This looks delicious! I love moussaka but I peel the eggplant and the potatoes. I don't like the texture of the peels. 😏
One of my favourites to be honest Rik. Just as is!
This pedantic cook could have reduced the time of the video by 2/3 he repeats everything and he's talking down to us like we're 5 year olds. I should know better than to listen to a British cook making greek food
Hi Rik this is almost exactly as a Greek friend taught me to make moussaka, her husband was the co owner with his brothers of the famous Ellisia restaurant in London, I prob spelt that completely wrong lol. Maria cooked hers using lamb but didn't put potatoes in. I haven't made this for many years now so I think it's about time to make again. Ta very much Rik.😃👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼I just remembered Rik my friend used to whisk egg yolks into the bechemel.😃
Very nice! I was wondering if you could have some texmex or authentic Mexican dishes. I'm from Oklahoma and that was a night out for my family. I learned how to make home made salsa now need a good refried bean recipe or enchilada etc. Home made tortillas.
Wow, this recipe made me salivate! Holy cow that looks good! Normally I make Eggplant Parmesan when I have some handy, but I think this will be my next Eggplant dish! Thanks Rik for another great video and recipe!
This is the only way I can manage to eat aubergine. They always look like huge purple jewels in the shop, so beautiful and tactile, but they are the only vegetable I’ve ever come across that I don’t like. However, in moussaka I enjoy them. I tried making it with just potato and it’s just not as authentic. I really want to love them, but haven’t managed that yet. I’ll keep trying though, just because they’re so pretty.lol
That looked delicious Rik, another winning recipe xx
Get out of my waaaaay….I'm heading to the grocery store!!!!
Love this delicious dish.
Not had this dish in many years and it is a truly wonderful dish. Now normally I wouldn't thank you for aubergines but in a moussaka it becomes a different beast for some reason. What did strike me while you made this dish was the mince ( I would normally associate lamb with moussaka but that aside), the basic mince you made, just how many dishes we use this formula for. From Italian, Indian, British, god knows. One basic base recipe with so many uses and so many end products. Mince, onions, garlic, tomatoes and the world is on the worktop.
Amazing mmmmm❤
I'm excited…. this is a recipe I've been looking at for some time now and still haven't made it.
Thanks as always for your encouragement and guidance Rik 😊
Modern eggplants have been bred to be less bitter with fewer seeds than heritage varieties. Are you salting to primarily remove.moisture or bitterness?
❤ I love this dish I cannot wait to make it thank you ❤
I had this first at school- it was all potato then (because, who had aubergine in the 70s 😅😅) A Greek place off Bristol city centre taught me the right way to make it and I've never looked back. Great recipe, Rik
❤❤❤❤😊
Yup, this is the moussaka I know. 100% yummyness!😋 I've been ordering it from diverse restaurants that had in on their menu's, but it never was like this one. I used to make it myself, but my oven has died on me and I haven't had time to get a new one. But as soon as I get a new over, this will probably be the first thing I make again.