Kosheri

This is a delicious Egyptian lentil-rice dish topped with crunchy onions that’s quite the undertaking to make, but worth every dirty pot and pan!

You’ll need 4 burners if you choose to cook all of the components of the dish simultaneously, but the cooking time of each is less than 30 minutes and including prep time, the dish really only takes ~ 1 hour in the end….not too daunting.

Though the spicy tomato sauce is optional, I wouldn’t omit it. This mix of tomatoes, hot chilies, cumin and vinegar for extra zip adds a very bright element to the cinnamon-spiced rice dish. Do watch the salt level….I used far less than the recipe calls for and it was still a little too much.

Salt level is also an issue for me with the kosheri: the cooked rice/vermicelli is very salty, but gets mixed with lentils and onions that have been cooked without salt. Though the dish is nicely seasoned in the end, I would have preferred less concentration of salt in the rice.

Apart from my little issue with seasoning, the dish turned out very well. The recipe says it serves 4, I thought it should be 6 when I saw the finished amount, but it's so good, it's almost addictive. It ended up serving only 4 as a main in the end.

Definitely something I will be making again.