What is Al-Hanini?

It is one of the Ramadan meals in the central region of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and is also frequently consumed during the winter season due to its high caloric content. It consists of dates, whole wheat bread, and butter. It is prepared by heating butter and stirring it several times until it reaches maximum heat, after which dates are added, which contain about 81percent sugars. Dates are manually ground and kneaded with wheat cake wetted with water, made from whole wheat flour. Hanini makers used to use a type of date paste called Maktoomi, but nowadays they use Sukkari.

Lemon is served with Hanini as desired, in addition to milk or yogurt, to complete the high-calorie meal by cooking it on low heat and stirring it with natural cow's butter. The quality of Hanini's taste depends on the degree of maturity of the whole wheat, the type of dates used, the consistency of the date paste with the wheat, how finely it's ground and its thinness, and most importantly, the ratio of ground dates to baked wheat, which gives a special flavour.