Pantry · المونة

Molokhia, Mulukhiyah, Mloukhieh

ملوخية

One green soup, a dozen spellings, and the reason none of them are wrong.

Dried molokhia leaves, the pantry form most families abroad cook from.

Why it has so many names

Arabic does not map cleanly onto English letters, and ملوخية reached the United States with families from Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Tunisia. Each household wrote it by ear. So the same dish turns up as molokhia, molokhiya, mloukhieh, mulukhiyah, molohiya, and melokhia, with a handful of others in between. If you typed one of those into a search bar and landed here, you found the right green.

The common romanizations you will see on menus and jars: molokhia, molokhiya, moloukhia, mloukhieh, mloukhiyeh, mulukhiyah, mulukhiyya, mulukhiya, molohiya, molokheya, melokhia, meloukhia. In English it is also called Jew's mallow, jute mallow, or jute leaves. The plant itself is Corchorus olitorius.

What it actually is

Molokhia is the leaf of a summer plant, jute mallow. Cooked, the leaves turn silky and a little slippery, close to what okra does in a pot. That texture is the reason people who grew up on it crave it, and the reason it splits a table down the middle. It sells three ways: fresh (rare in the States), frozen, and dried. Arabi carries the dried YAFA leaves, which sit happily in the pantry and come back to life in hot broth.

The three molokhias

The dish changes shape by country, and the arguments about whose is right are older than any of us.

• Egyptian. Leaves minced to a fine green velvet, thickened in broth, finished with a ta'leya of garlic and ground coriander fried in ghee. Rabbit or chicken alongside. Thick enough to scoop with bread.
• Levantine (Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese). Whole or torn leaves loosened in chicken broth, brightened with lemon and the same garlic-coriander ta'leya, ladled over rice cooked with vermicelli. Soupier, looser, built for a Sunday.
• Tunisian. A different creature. The leaves cook low for hours until they darken to near-black, rich with beef and olive oil.

How Palestinians make it

This is the Levantine version, the one most of our families set on the table.

1. Simmer chicken with onion, a bay leaf, and cardamom until it falls off the bone. Keep every drop of the broth.
2. Add the molokhia leaves to the broth, dried ones rehydrated first, and cook them gently until the pot goes silky.
3. Make the ta'leya. Fry a generous amount of minced garlic with ground coriander in ghee until it turns toasty and sharp, then stir the whole pan into the pot.
4. Finish with lemon. Serve over rice and vermicelli, the chicken on the side, bread for whatever the spoon misses.

Set This Table

The dried leaves and the ta'leya, from what Arabi actually stocks.

YAFA Molokhia Leaves$8.99Ground coriander for the ta'leya$6.99Vermicelli for the rice$3.49Pita for the rest$5.79

Free U.S. shipping over $75. Fresh leaves are on our should-carry list; the dried YAFA is the real thing in the meantime.