Mujaddara Lentils and Rice

[tielan]

Mujaddara Lentils and Rice was stored on my Pinterest board "nommy" and I've never made it.

Ingredients
1 teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
¼ teaspoon coriander powder
2 large onions sliced into petals (about 3 cups)
Pinch of red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons olive oil for cooking the onions plus extra for drizzling over the mujaddara before serving
1 cup chopped cilantro or parsley
2 - 3 cups cooked rice I used leftover jasmine rice…use your fingers to break up any clumpy bits
1 15 oz can lentils about 2 cups cooked

Recipe
Mix the cumin, cinnamon, salt, pepper and coriander powder in a small bowl. Set aside.

Heat the olive oil and red pepper flakes in a skillet large enough to hold the rice, onions and lentils (a Dutch oven would work well, too).

Add the onions to the skillet and cook over high heat until they begin to change color a bit. Add half the spice mixture to the onions and stir well.

At this point, reduce the heat to medium low and allow the onions to cook until they turn a beautiful golden brown color. Some of them will get really dark. It will take about 20 – 30 minutes, but they will be sweet and delicious. Just keep an eye on them so they don’t burn.

While the onions are finishing up, drain and rinse the lentils. Also break up any clumps in the rice.

Add the rice, lentils and the remaining spice mixture. Reduce the heat to low and cook until the lentils and rice are heated through.

Taste and adjust the seasonings. Stir in the chopped cilantro.

Before serving drizzle olive oil over the mujaddara.

notes, thoughts, changes: I had leftover rice, an onion, and most of the herbs except for coriander and coriander powder. Never used coriander powder before, but we have coriander seed which is what coriander powder is made from. I had a lot from the garden...but I planted all the seeds out. Next year I won't be so swift to do that!

It was pretty easy to make, although the time to caramelise the onions was more than I wanted to spend. Still, they were really good there.

Yes, I'd make it again. Simple but comforting and tasty.

It occurs to me it could actually be a super-simple recipe if you made a spice-mix of the spices, and did a whole bunch of caramelised onions all at once, then froze them. The onions might be a big mushy, but the taste would probably still be there.

Comments

[siberian_skys]

This looks really good and I have most of the ingredients or things I could substitute. I'm bookmarking it for down the road.

[adrian_turtle]

You can carmelize onions in a crockpot. Slice as many as will fit in the pot (or as many as you have patience to slice), toss with oil, and cook on low 4 hours. The person I learned this from recommended cooking them overnight, but I kept waking up to a very loud smell of "dinner is almost ready and it will be delicious!" It turned out they were sufficiently carmelized after 4 hours. Your crock pot may seal tighter, and/or you may not live in such a small apartment. They freeze just fine and are lovely in soups and stews.

[tielan]

Mmm, caramelised onions. I vaguely recall doing that once, and they were beautiful. But not enough. I think they were gone in a week or some ridiculously short time...

So good, though!

[minoanmiss]

Caramelizing onions can be sped up considerably by adding a pinch or two of baking soda to them while cooking them (maybe 1/8 tsp per cup)

[tielan]

Now, 'baking soda' is one of those tricksy things here in Australia.

There's 'bicarb soda' and 'baking powder' but from what I've been able to determine, neither of these are 'baking soda'. It's all very confusing.

[minoanmiss]

Oh that's right, I forgot to translate from my country's uncouth tongue. ;)

I'm pretty sure bicarb soda = baking soda = sodium bicarbonate = NaHCO3 . As opposed to washing soda, basically.