Koshari (Egyptian lentils, rice and pasta with spiced tomato sauce)
70 min · 25 g protein · 502 cals / serving
Cairo's favourite street dish: lentils, rice and little macaroni piled together with chickpeas, ladled with a garlicky, cumin-spiced tomato sauce, splashed with sharp chilli-garlic vinegar and crowned with sweet, crisp onions. Here the lentils and chickpeas take the biggest share of the bowl and the onions crisp in the oven with a spoon of oil instead of a pan of it.
Ingredients
Crispy onions
- 3 medium onions, halved and very thinly sliced
- 2 tsp canola oil
- a pinch salt
Base
- 1 cup + 2 tbsp brown or green lentils lentils, rinsed
- 1/2 cup basmati rice, short- or medium-grain, rinsed
- 3/4 cup small macaroni pasta
- 1 can (15 oz), drained chickpeas
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 3/4 tsp salt
Sauce
- 1 tsp olive oil
- 5 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 2 1/2 cans (14 oz each) canned crushed tomatoes
- 1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1 tsp red pepper flakes
- 1 tbsp white vinegar
- 3/4 tsp salt
Dakka (chilli-garlic vinegar)
- 3 cloves garlic, crushed
- 3 tbsp white vinegar
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
- 1/2 tsp ground cumin
Steps
- Heat the oven to 400°F. Toss the onions with the oil and salt, spread them thinly over two lined baking sheets, and roast 25–35 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes and swapping the trays, until deep golden and crisp at the edges. Watch the last 5 minutes closely.
- Meanwhile simmer the lentils in plenty of water for 10 minutes. Add the rice, cumin and salt, top up with water to cover by 1 inch, and simmer covered on low for 15–18 minutes, until both are tender; drain any water left. In another pan, boil the macaroni in salted water until just tender and drain.
- For the sauce, warm the oil in a saucepan, add the garlic and cook for a minute without colouring. Stir in the tomato paste for a minute, then the crushed tomatoes, cumin, coriander, chilli, vinegar and salt. Simmer 20 minutes until thick.
- Warm the chickpeas in the sauce for the last 5 minutes, or keep them separate to scatter on top.
- For the dakka, stir the garlic, vinegar, lemon juice, chilli and cumin together with 2 tablespoons of water. Serve the lentil rice in bowls topped with macaroni, chickpeas, plenty of sauce and a heap of crisp onions, with the dakka to splash over.
Good to know
Why cook the lentils and rice together?
It is how koshari stalls do it: the rice takes on the earthy lentil flavour and you wash one less pan. Brown or green lentils hold their shape; red lentils would turn to mush.
Can I fry the onions instead?
You can, and the street-stall version does. Shallow-fried onions soak up about four tablespoons more oil, which takes the score from about 61 to 50.
Does it keep?
Store the base, sauce and onions separately for up to 4 days. Reheat the base with a splash of water, and re-crisp the onions for a few minutes in a hot oven.
Alternative
Per
- Calories
- 98
- Protein
- (20%)
- 5 g
- Fat
- (13%)
- 1 g
- Carbohydrates
- (67%)
- 18 g
- of which sugar
- 4 g
- Fiber
- 4 g
- Sodium
- 307 mg
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Computed from the ingredients with our published formula, not yet kitchen-tested. How
As written, 2510 kcal goes into the pot and 2300 g of ingredients comes out as about 2567 g of food: 98 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water and energy density is the score's biggest lever, so the dish is scored as cooked, not as an average of its parts. Every ingredient links to its food page, with the same data and score. The label's percentages are each macronutrient's share of the calories. The full formula.