Moudardara | Lebanese Lentils with Rice and Caramelized Onions
This moudardara or mujadara recipe is a traditional Lebanese recipe of lentils with rice and caramelized onion. It’s bursting with amazing flavors and it’s a delicious vegetarian comfort meal.
Mejadra/Mujaddara/Mudadara/Moudardara, this Middle Eastern recipe has so many different names variations so let’s just call it Lebanese lentils with rice and caramelized onions instead. 🙂
I first tried this wonderful recipe at a Lebanese restaurant and absolutely loved it. I’m not a big fan of green lentils, as I prefer the red type instead, but I bought green lentils especially for this recipe and it was a success!
It was very difficult to find a good moudardara recipe online. I only found crappy recipes which surely didn’t taste authentic just by reading the ingredients. I mean the only spice they had was salt. Really?!
One thing I remembered about this recipe is that it had a strong cinnamon taste. I did a bit of research and finally, I discovered Yottam Ottolenghi’s recipe here. I knew this was going to be my inspiration. So I followed his instructions but adjusted it a little bit to my own taste.
For example, I didn’t deep-fry the onions like he says in the recipe. Instead, I used less oil and caramelized them after I dipped them in some cornstarch. I wanted them to be extra crispy and this seemed to do the trick.
The result was just what I expected. It has an incredible cinnamon taste, a subtly sweet flavor, and the textures…oh…the textures are just perfect in this dish. Caramelized onions take it to the next level.
Hope you’ll give this lentils with rice recipe a try. I’m sure you’ll love it!
Moudardara | Lebanese Lentils with Rice
Ingredients
- 250 g lentils green or brown
- 200 g long grain white rice
- 4 onions medium, julienned
- 4 Tbsps oil – for frying
- 2 tsp cumin seeds ground
- ½ Tbsp coriander seeds ground
- 2 Tbsp olive oil
- ½ tsp turmeric ground
- 1½ tsp allspice ground
- 1½ tsp cinnamon ground
- 1 tsp brown sugar
- 2 Tbsps cornstarch
- Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Heat the sunflower oil in a saucepan. Add the julienned onions into a bowl and sprinkle cornstarch on them. Cover them with starch and then add them to the pan and fry them over medium-high heat, for 7-10 minutes. Stir occasionally with a wooden spoon. They’re ready when they’re golden. Make sure you stir constantly so you won’t burn them. You don’t want to turn them black.
- When ready, turn off the heat and sprinkle them with salt.
- Meanwhile, put the lentils in a saucepan, cover them with water, and boil them for 20 minutes, until they’re soft but not mushy.
- Move the caramelized onions to a bowl and rinse the saucepan. Heat the saucepan and add the spices. Toast them over medium heat for 1 minute, then add the rice, olive oil, sugar, salt, and pepper. Stir well. Add the cooked lentils and 400ml of water. Let them simmer on low heat for 15 minutes.
- Remove from the heat and cover the pan with a lid. Let it rest for 10 minutes. Serve this with the caramelized onion on top.
If you make this, please leave a review and rating if you liked this recipe! ★★★★★
Took an hour and 15 minutes to make but it was well worth it! Those caramelized onions are amazing and the spice blend…perfection! Thank you for the recipe!
You’re welcome! Yup! Love caramelized onions too!