White rice is a basic survival storage food, and Koshari is an everyday working-person’s meal in most of Egypt. It tastes infinitely better than it sounds.
This is part of a series of Survival Recipes that you can make from commonly stored foods, your garden in season, foraging wild edibles, or what is seasonally plentiful on the homestead.
You Will Need:
- Caramelized onions (see Best Pizza recipe for details)
- white rice, uncooked
- lentils (I like orange dal, because they cook quickly)
- plain spaghetti pasta
- yellow onions, diced
- your favorite tomato sauce (even packaged sauce will work)
- ground cumin
- olive oil
Directions:
- Add 2 parts white rice 1 part lentils to a pan, and cover with water (1 ‘knuckle’ depth above surface).
- Bring to boil, reduce to simmer.
- While rice and lentils cook, break up the spaghetti pasta, and lightly brown it in olive oil.
- After about 10 minutes, add the browned pasta to the rice/lentil mix and continue simmering, covered, about another 10 minutes. (Do not expect ‘fluffy’ rice – thick and sticky is what you want.)
- Saute diced onions in oil, add tomato sauce and a healthy shot of ground cumin. simmer.
- When rice/lentils/pasta mix is cooked, place serving in a bowl, cover with caramelized onions and top with the cumin/tomato sauce.
Really delicious, filling and easy. Makes a great, simple camping meal as well. (Thanks to Anthony Bourdain “No Reservations” Cairo episode for the inspiration)
Can almost smell the aroma through the ‘puter!
The caramelized onions and cumin-tomato sauce DO smell pretty good :) Fill whole house with yumminess :)
I was pretty skeptical when Tony B. raved about how good a kinda-dirt-simple dish was. When the Egyptian gent who was showing him around said “I would never marry anyone who couldn’t make good koshari”, I had to try it. It’s that good :)
An addition: a friend from “elsewhere” told me yesterday that her MD had recommended brown rice, lentils and sweet potatoes as a part of her weight-loss regimen. Koshari came to mind.
I tried brown rice and lentils, no pasta. Cut a sweet potato into ‘french fry’ shape and roasted w/ a little olive oil, salt and pepper until tender but crunchy. Same sauce and caramelized onions.
When rice/lentils and taters were ready, chopped up the fries into “hash” and mixed with the rice and lentils. Topped w/onions and tomato-cumin sauce.
I was naughty, and added come crumbled bacon to mine, not hers. This could be a definite winner, using mostly storable and home-grown “winter” food :)