Mujaddara

What to expect

Taste

Sweet, and much sweeter than a plate of lentils and rice has any right to be. Onions fried to deep brown are genuinely sweet — their sugars have concentrated and browned — and there is a lot of onion here. Against that sweetness the lentils are earthy and slightly mineral, and the rice is plain and buttery from the oil. Cumin is the largest of the spices and is warm and earthy; coriander is citrusy; allspice is the one that makes it taste Levantine rather than generically Middle Eastern, and it is a small quantity doing a great deal. Salt is essential and easily under-done. And then the yoghurt, which is the acid the pot entirely lacks — cool, sour, and the thing that makes a second plateful appealing.

Aroma

Frying onions for the best part of half an hour, which is one of the great domestic smells and gets progressively deeper as they brown. Then the ground spices going in, which is a brief sharp burst. The finished dish smells sweet and toasty rather than spiced, which surprises people.

Texture

Three things: separate grains of rice, lentils that hold their shape and give under the tooth, and onions that are both soft and crisp depending on which ones. The crisp ones on top are the textural interest in a dish that would otherwise be uniformly soft, which is exactly why the recipe splits them. Yoghurt adds a cool smoothness.

Sound

The onions are the soundtrack and they are informative: a loud violent spitting for the first minute as their water comes out, settling into a steady frying sound, and then quietening noticeably as they dehydrate. When the noise drops and the smell turns from sweet to toasty, they are close.

How the flavour moves

Sweet onion first and strongly. Then the earthy lentils across the middle. Cumin and allspice come through behind them. The finish is sweet and toasty and quite long, and the yoghurt is what cuts it — a mouthful with yoghurt and a mouthful without are noticeably different experiences, which is the point of serving it alongside rather than stirring it in.

Serve it

Hot or warm, with cold yoghurt, and that contrast matters. It is also genuinely good at room temperature, which makes it a useful dish for a table.

Goes with

Yoghurt, which is effectively part of the dish. A sharp salad — tomato, cucumber, parsley, lemon — which is what a Levantine table would put beside it. Pickles. Flatbread. Where it fails is next to anything else sweet, and served without acid of any kind, which makes it heavy going after a few mouthfuls.

Cook's notes

Difficulty

Easy and it requires patience with the onions, which is the only demanding part. Slicing 700g of onion is a genuine job and frying them properly takes longer than any recipe admits.

Cost

Very low. Lentils, rice and onions. It is one of the cheapest complete meals in the collection.

Equipment

A wide frying pan for the onions and a heavy pan with a tight lid for the rice and lentils. A sieve.

When to make it

Any time. It is a year-round staple.

Best season

None.

You know it is done when

Onions deep brown, shrunk to a fraction of their volume, some pieces genuinely crisp. Lentils holding their skins. Rice with the liquid gone and steam hissing faintly at the rim.

And it feels like

Rice in separate grains, lentils intact and yielding, onions on top crisp and those folded through soft and sweet.

Food safety

Nothing unusual. A pan with 120ml of hot oil and 700g of wet onion in it spits and deserves respect for the first minute.

Where it goes wrong

Under-frying the onions, which is the fault — golden is not far enough, and the dish tastes of nothing much without properly dark ones. Overcooking the lentils at the first stage, so they collapse into paste in the second. Not rinsing the rice. Too little oil, so the onions steam rather than fry. Stirring the reserved onions in, which loses the crisp layer. And serving it without yoghurt or anything acidic, which makes it heavy.

If it does go wrong

Bland: the onions were not taken far enough, and there is no fixing it at the end — fry a fresh batch properly and put them on top. Mushy: the lentils were overcooked before they went in. Sticky rice: not rinsed, or too much liquid. Burnt onions: uneven slicing, or the heat was too high at the end — the last few minutes go fast. Dry: a splash more of the lentil liquid.

Making it ahead

Very well. Make it a day ahead and reheat, keeping some onions back to fry fresh for the top. It is arguably better on the second day.

Keeping it

Three days in the fridge and it is very good cold.

Reheating

Well, covered, with a splash of water. Crisp onions on top do not survive it, so keep some back and fry them fresh if it matters.

Freezing

Two months, and the texture holds up reasonably.

Leftovers

Excellent — this is a dish that is routinely made in quantity and eaten across several days. Good cold, good stuffed into flatbread, good under a fried egg.

Scaling it

Doubles easily. The onions are the bottleneck and 1.4kg of them is a long half hour in two pans.

Substitutions

Green or brown lentils hold their shape; red lentils collapse entirely and will not work. Bulgur wheat in place of rice makes the Palestinian and Syrian version and is arguably better — nuttier, and it stands up to the onions. Any long-grain rice does. The oil can be olive, which is more traditional in some places and gives a heavier result.

Dietary swaps

Vegan without the yoghurt, which is easily replaced with a plant yoghurt or a tahini sauce. Vegetarian as written. Gluten-free with rice, not with bulgur. Nut-free. Contains milk through the yoghurt, which is served alongside.

Shopping for it

Green or brown lentils, not red. Basmati or bulgur. Allspice, whole and ground fresh if possible, since it loses its aromatics quickly. Plain full-fat yoghurt.

Keeping the cost down

It is already about as cheap as a meal gets. Buy lentils and rice in large bags. Onions are cheapest bought loose in quantity, and this recipe uses a lot of them.

Sustainability

Excellent. Lentils are among the lowest-impact protein crops there are, everything in it is shelf-stable, and it feeds four for very little.

Nutrition

Around 560 calories a serving. It is a genuinely complete protein — around 18g per serving from the lentils and rice together — plus a great deal of fibre. Most of the fat is the oil the onions were fried in. It is one of the more nutritionally sound main courses in this collection and one of the cheapest.

Worth it?

Worth it, and it is the best-value main course in the collection. Three cheap ingredients and half an hour of frying onions produce something genuinely delicious, nutritionally complete and better the next day. The whole dish rests on taking the onions further than feels comfortable — do that and the rest looks after itself.

Where it comes from

Origin

The Levant, and it is old.

Also called

Mujaddara — مجدرة. Also mujadara, mejadra, megadarra. In Egypt a very close relative is koshari, though that is a more elaborate dish.

Said out loud

moo-JAD-da-ra.

What the name means

From the Arabic root for smallpox or pockmark — the lentils speckling the rice are said to look like pox marks. It is not a flattering image and it is the standard etymology.

History

This is one of the few dishes in this collection with a genuinely old written record: a recipe for mujaddara appears in Kitab al-Tabikh, a Baghdadi cookery book compiled in 1226 by al-Baghdadi, where it is described as a dish of the poor. It has stayed that: mujaddara is proverbially the food of ordinary people and of fasting, and there is an Arabic saying to the effect that it is the dish of the poor. The reason it works nutritionally is the same reason that pulse-and-grain pairings appear independently in every cuisine on earth — lentils are short of methionine and rich in lysine, cereals are the reverse, and together they supply a complete protein without meat. Mujaddara fed people well for centuries before anybody knew why.

Why it matters

It is Lenten and fasting food for Levantine Christians, everyday food for everybody, and a dish with a strong association with thrift and with home. It is also one of the standard things made in quantity for a crowd.

When it is eaten

Every day, fasting periods, and any table that needs feeding cheaply.

The traditional way

The onions, fried until very dark, and split between the pot and the top. Some traditional versions fry them almost black and use the darkened oil as the cooking fat for the rice, which is worth trying.

How it changed

Very little. Rice has displaced bulgur in many places, which is a real change — bulgur is the older grain here and gives a nuttier, chewier dish.

Regional variations

Bulgur instead of rice in Palestine and parts of Syria. Egypt's koshari adds pasta, chickpeas, tomato sauce and a vinegar-garlic dressing and is a street food rather than a home dish. Some Lebanese versions purée part of the lentils, giving a much softer result called mudardara.

How this version differs

It takes the onions further than most recipes ask and reserves a good part of them for the top, which gives a crisp layer as well as a sweet one. Otherwise it is orthodox.

Sources and credit

The 1226 Kitab al-Tabikh reference is the standard citation.

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