One Pot Lentil Rice with BIG Flavors | Mujaddara | Vegetarian | Vegan Recipe

Hey friends today I'm sharing this very satisfying and easy to make lentil and rice recipe. A dish that comes together just so easily. Very popular in Middle Eastern, Indian and some African cuisines. My version includes red cabbage, some carrots which are not classic and then you've got all the nice spices to go with it. To start the dish let's do some prep work. For this recipe I have two cups of lentils. Empty them into this bowl. Just quickly go through them for any foreign debris or sand and then I'm going to run this through water. Just rinse them. Lentils all clean. We'll set the lentils aside and let's soak. This is a step that you can do overnight. Four hours will be perfect or you can just do them straight from dry. Next for our recipe I have two cups basmati rice into the bowl. Rinse this rice a couple times until the water runs clear. Now set the rice aside also. Now some knife work. caramelizing the onions. Once the onion starts to turn color lower the heat to medium and cook until they are fully caramelized. As the onions caramelized I went ahead and peeled one carrot and then just julienned matchsticks and then I have a red cabbage about two cups that I thinly sliced and we also need ginger garlic. For the spices I have some red pepper flakes, some oregano, coriander, cumin, paprika, salt and pepper. All ingredients used in this recipe will be in the description box for you. These onions are all caramelized. Now I'll take out half of them and put them in a paper lined container. Reserve them. We'll use them as a garnish just to finish the dish. Now into the pot add ginger garlic about a tablespoon of each. Briefly sweat. Add a teaspoon tomato paste. You can use tomatoes. In no particular order add the spices and the herb oregano, coriander, chili flakes, cumin, paprika, black pepper. Reserve the salt until towards the end. If you so wish at this point you can add some more oil. Let's do that. Red cabbage goes in. Carrot. Now drain up the water together. Add four cups water. Give this a good stir. Bring this to a vigorous boil. Adjust the amount of water if needed. You can add more. This is also a good point that you can use any stock of your choice. Vegetable stock would have been a perfect choice here or even chicken stock but we are keeping this vegetarian. I will add in about just two more cups here just to factor in the lentils. Now a good time to add my cilantro stems. I always like to use them at this stage. Now reduce the heat to medium and then cook this pot for about 15 minutes. Come back, give a stir and add the salt. I opened this pot at about 15 minutes point. The lentils were still a little bit more crunchier than I expected so I just I gave it a stir and let it continue cooking. So now taste this. Now it's much better and you can notice most of the water has been absorbed and then add now all the salt. I'm adding about a teaspoon of Scotch salt. Just carefully. I like the color contrast already. The carrot, the red cabbage. They're showing very beautifully. Just a taste here. Give this a lid, a cover. Turn the heat to the lowest here and then just let this cook for another about 10 minutes or so. Now add some cilantro, mint and scallions. You can switch cilantro for parsley and just carefully just lift this. This looks so delicious. I have some pitted dates too that I can toss in at this point. This is a very good dish too for Ramadan. It's also a dish that you can do at any time. Cover this, let rest for between 20 to half an hour. The longer it rests the better just like you'll do a regular rice. Now this pot of rice and lentils have been sitting here for about half an hour. As you can notice there's a small hole right here. I flattened it with this aluminum foil just to let the steam in while I was cooking. Nice trick. Now all we need is to serve up this dish. Get some of this beautiful rice and lentils, red cabbage. File this into a bowl. Serve family style. Now finish this with some of our reserved onions right on top. The diced dates, they give a good contrasting flavor and also it's a classic Middle Eastern flavor too. And then garnish with cilantro, the scallions and the mint. For me, some of this very good looking delicious lentils and rice. Dig in. Some of the dates, the cabbage, the onions. Just listening to those flavors, just so simple. Lentils, rice, think about it. Add some cabbage texture, nice flavor, some sweetness. Then you get the savoriness from the lentils and you get this very delicious dish. No wonder it's so popular just almost all over the world. It's a recipe that I hope you and your family can try and you'll enjoy it. Everything here works so perfectly, comes together just so nicely to make a meal just by itself or as a perfect side dish on any night of the week. Thank you so much for watching this one. I hope to see you in the next one. Give me a thumbs up if you enjoyed this video. Subscribe, subscribe please. We'll see you in the next one.