Levantine · Side
Mujaddara Hamra
- Intermediate
- 45 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with an earthy, grounding base, a sweet edge rounding the corners, ending saline and clean.
Ingredients
- 250 g small brown lentils
- 200 g coarse bulgur, grade 3
- 600 g onions, sliced thin
- 200 ml olive oil
- 10 g fine salt
- 3 g ground cumin
- 2 g black pepper
- 1 litre water
The skills inside
Reducing a sauceSugar stages & caramel
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Simmer the lentils in the water until tender but still holding their shape, about 25 minutes, and leave them sitting in their liquid. 25 min
- Fry the onions in the olive oil over medium heat, stirring often, through translucent, through gold, and on for another 10 to 15 minutes until they are dark mahogany and smell of caramel rather than raw sugar. 15 min
- Lift a third of the onions onto paper to drain and crisp, then scrape the rest into the lentils, oil and all, with the salt, cumin and pepper.
- Stir in the bulgur, bring back to a simmer, cover and cook on the lowest heat until the grain has drunk the liquid and a spoon dragged across the base leaves a clean channel, about 15 minutes. 15 min
- Rest off the heat, still covered, for 10 minutes, then fork it loose and pile the reserved onions on top; serve warm or at room temperature. 10 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Sugar stages & caramel 53 recipes
- Nothing is stirred once it is boiling, and any crystals clinging to the side of the pan are brushed down rather than left to fall in.
- Judged by temperature or by a tested stage rather than by time: consecutive stages are a few degrees apart and look identical in the pan.
- Colour is read off the heat and in good light, remembering that sugar keeps darkening after the flame is out.
- Stopped decisively at the point wanted: off the heat and into the next liquid or onto a cold surface, rather than left to coast in a hot pan.
- The result is clear and smooth rather than grainy, cloudy, or seized into a solid mass.
Where it goes wrong It was stirred after coming to the boil, or a stray crystal from the side of the pan fell back in. One crystal seeds the whole pan and the syrup turns grainy within seconds, and once sugar has crystallised the only cure is more water and starting the whole thing again.
Reducing a sauce 95 recipes
- A steady simmer with the surface moving, never a rolling boil that throws it up the sides and scorches what is left on the base.
- Judged by behaviour rather than the clock: it coats the back of a spoon and holds a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
- The drop in volume is visible against the side of the pan: there is a line to see, not a guess about whether anything has happened.
- Seasoned at the end and not the beginning, because salt concentrates at exactly the rate everything else does.
- Nothing is catching underneath: a spoon drawn across the base comes up clean, with no browned film building where the heat is fiercest.
Where it goes wrong It was seasoned at the start and then reduced by half. The salt concentrated along with everything else, so the sauce reaches perfect body and is too salty to serve. And the only remedy is to dilute it and reduce it all over again.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Riesling or Grenache
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
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