The best tagine pots for succulent stews

A tagine is an earthenware pot with a flat base and conical lid, long used in north African cooking – most famously in Morocco. Dating back centuries, tagine pots (which we'll simply refer to as tagines, though the dish cooked inside goes by the same name) are a pretty clever piece of kit.

Essentially, the conical shape ensures that rising steam condenses and then falls back to the food, continuously bastes it. The process is ideal in the dry climes of the Maghreb, where water has to be used sparingly.

Tagines are best for long, slow cooking of tough cuts of meat, though vegetarian stews work well too. And they're very easy to use: "I enjoy the simplicity of a tagine pot, its practicality is paramount," says Herve Deville, head chef of Momo's in London. "It cooks evenly while also keeping the dish refreshingly moist." 

These days, says Belgian-Moroccan food writer Nargisse Benkabbou, tagines aren't as ubiquitous as as they once were. As Ben Tish, author of Moorish: Vibrant recipes from the Mediterranean, tells me, Dutch ovens, casseroles and slow cookers will in all honesty produce just as deliciously tender results. But tagines add a little theatre to your dinner party, and the most beautiful ones are wonderful to place on the middle of the table and serve. They also retain heat really well. 

The most traditional material is earthenware, originally not glazed – though now glazing is common, making the pots more resistant to high temperatures. You shouldn't need to cook at high heat, however. Either cook on a very low hob, or in the oven at a low temperature – around 150-160C.

Like with a well-worn cast iron pan, the flavour is said to improve as your ceramic tagine ages and develops a gout du terroir, or taste of the earth.

Tagines are lovely pieces of equipment. They're not necessarily the most convenient, and as they're quite tall they can be a pain to store. Having said that, a beautiful tagine can become an ornament in itself. They're fun to cook with, very easy to use.

Shijiazhuang Zhengzhong Technology Co., Ltd could both manufacture the pre-seasoned cast iron cookware and enameled cast iron cookware, we have kinds of cast iron products, include the tagine, welcome you to visit our website for more information: www.centercookware.com 

Here are the best tagine pot we tested,

 cast iron and ceramic tagine,

The benefit of having the cast iron base is obvious: you can use any heat surface, including any hob type, which you can’t with ceramic. Cast iron is also great at even, slow conductivity, and we found when cooking a tagine direct on a hob at a very low temperature that the whole dish was bubbling away, not just the bits at the centre, clearly this is a top cooking pot. Meats turned out impossibly tender, with crispy gnarled bits from where the hot iron had caramelised the lamb and onions, welcome to keep attention to our company website to read more tagine recipe in future.