Mudjadara is lentil rice - a dish that came to us from Eastern cuisine. The recipe is incredibly simple and also incredibly tasty. Mudjadar can be served as an independent dish, it is justified, since it is very satisfying.
If you are cooking vegetarian recipes, serve rice and lentils with a light vegetable salad, it will also be tasty. It is advisable to soak the green lentils in cold water for a few hours, so it will cook faster, and red can be cooked immediately.
I will focus on the choice of rice. The variety must be crumbly, preferably fragrant - jasmine, basmati, in extreme cases, take steamed, long-grained. Round rice, which is used for sushi, can turn your lunch into sticky porridge.
The variety of onions is also important for mujadari, because there is a lot of it in the recipe. You will not regret if you cook with red sweet onions. For lenten menus cook mujadara without butter.
- Cooking time: 1 hour
- Servings: 4
Ingredients for cooking mujadara - lentil rice:
- 180 g green lentils;
- 180 g of steamed white rice;
- 3 large red onions;
- 1 teaspoon of zira;
- 30 g butter;
- 40 ml of olive oil;
- salt, pepper, vegetable oil for frying.
The way of cooking mujadar is rice with lentils.
We sort out lentils, so that small pebbles, which, to be honest, are quite often found in legumes, do not accidentally get into the food.
Put the lentils in a saucepan, pour 1, 5 liters of cold water, pour salt to taste and cook on low heat for about 45 minutes after boiling.
Pour the washed rice into a separate saucepan, put a piece of butter, pour 250 ml of cold water, salt. Put the pot on the stove, bring to a boil, close the lid. Cook on low heat for 15 minutes, wrap, leave the pot wrapped until the rest of the ingredients are cooked.
We clean the onions from the husk, cut them with feathers. In a pan, heat the vegetable oil, throw onions, sprinkle with salt. Fry on medium heat for 10-15 minutes, you do not need to turn it into chips, it is good enough to fry.
We put the frying pan with a thick bottom on the stove, heat it up, pour the cumin, fry the seeds until a light haze appears.
Turn the prepared lentils back onto a sieve, let it drain.
Pour boiled lentils into a deep salad bowl, add rice.
Pound Zira in a mortar. By the way, sometimes I add 1/3 teaspoon of fenugreek seeds to this dish, which I also pre-fry with zira. Fenugreek is bitter, therefore it needs to be taken quite a bit.
So, add pounded spices in a salad bowl.
Add the fried onion to the rest of the ingredients of the mujadar and we can assume that our dish is ready.
I advise you to leave a little onion for serving - it will decorate a plate!
Pour high-quality olive oil into a salad bowl.
Mix the ingredients, pepper the mujadar with freshly ground black pepper.
Serve at a mujadar table warm, sprinkle with the remaining fried onions.
As you can see, everything is very simple - from the most ordinary, boring products, we got a great oriental dish with a twist.
Mudjadara - rice with lentils ready. Enjoy your meal!