Next: about 8 Feb to 9 Mar 2027
Ramadan iftar and suhoor
The month of fasting, when white cheese anchors the pre-dawn meal and cheese-filled pastries come out at iftar.
Cheeses for Ramadan iftar and suhoor
During Ramadan the fast is kept from dawn to sunset. The pre-dawn suhoor is planned to last the day, and in Egypt, the Levant and Turkey it often includes salty white cheese: Domiati with ful in Cairo, beyaz peynir with olives and tomatoes in Istanbul, akkawi and labneh in Amman. After the fast is broken with dates and water, iftar tables carry fried cheese sambousek, fatayer and, for dessert, qatayef folded around sweet akkawi or nuts. Many cooks soak salty cheeses overnight to soften the salt for sweets. Exact dates depend on the sighting of the moon.
The cheeses
Written by the EveryCheese desk with AI assistance. Background: "Ramadan" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Akkawi: Paul Joseph, CC BY 2.0, source
- Beyaz peynir: E4024, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Domiati: MartinKassemJ120, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Nabulsi cheese: رائد عزمي حموده, CC BY-SA 3.0, source