Week 19 - Caramelization

Caramelized onions.

When Week 19 (caramelization) rolled around, all I knew was that I wanted to eat caramelized onions. I love caramelized onions. I thought about throwing them on a burger, but I didn't want to make a burger for the challenge.

Eventually I figured it out - mujadara! A lentil and rice dish which makes liberal use of caramelized onions. I love mujadara (also called mujaddara, moujadara, moudardara, etc) and this was the perfect opportunity to try my hand at it. I didn't want to just eat grains and onions for dinner, so I also decided on caramelized carrots for a side dish. Double caramelization for caramelization week!

MUJADARA

Mujadara is found throughout the Arab world, and according to Wikipedia, it's been around for centuries. It's not really surprising since the dish is filling, hearty, and nutritious, and makes use of ingredients which are usually plentiful and inexpensive. The main ingredients are lentils, rice, and onions, mixed with a variety of spices. I've had mujadara before, but this was my first time attempting to make it. After reviewing a few recipes, I decided to adapt this one from Aarti Party on the Food Network.

The ingredients for the mujadara, as adapted, were:

- 1 cup brown lentils ($0.75)
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil ($0.40)
- 1 tsp cumin seeds ($0.10)
- 1/2 tsp cracked black peppercorns ($0.05)
- 1-1/2 large yellow onions, thinly sliced ($0.90)
- 3/4 cup basmati rice (free)
- 1 tsp ground cumin ($0.05)
- 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper ($0.05)
- 1 cinnamon stick ($0.10)
- 1 tbsp lemon juice ($0.10)
- salt and pepper to taste ($0.10)

The whole thing cost us less than $3 (although that was partially due to the fact that we won the basmati rice at a health fair). Even if we had to pay for the rice, this still wouldn't have been very expensive. It's great as a vegetarian main dish if you're on a budget, since the cost really just comes from the onions and rice. Hearty, healthy and cheap! Made plenty of leftovers too.

The mujadara itself isn't terribly hard to make. The process just takes a really long time. Give yourself at least an hour, but probably closer to 2. This time, it didn't take a long time because of my prep. I can slice onions relatively quickly. For this recipe, you just need to give everything plenty of time to cook.

1. Cook lentils. Sort lentils, rinse, add to pot with cold water to cover by at least an inch. Bring to boil, turn down to simmer and cook until lentils are tender. Drain and set aside. [Recipe here says it will take 20 minutes, but they were not tender after 20 minutes. I had to add more water a few times and also cover them for a bit.]

2. Caramelize onions. While lentils cook, add oil to a large skillet. Once oil is warm, add cumin seeds and peppercorns and cook for about 1 minute. Add onions and salt. Cook until onions are brown and caramelized, adding water to deglaze if necessary. [I didn't need to add water. "Testing" the onions periodically to see how they were doing was such a tasty treat.]

3. Split onions and add spices. Remove a third to a half of the onions to a towel lined plate to add later. Try not to eat too many as they sit there. Add ground cumin, cayenne, cinnamon stick to the onions remaining in the pan. Saute 1 minute.

4. Add (almost) everything else. Add rice. Stir gently until grains start to brown. Add cooked lentils, 3 cups of water, 1.5 tsp of salt. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to low (keep pan at simmer). Cover and cook 30 minutes (until water is evaporated and rice is tender).

5. Steam. Turn off heat, keep lid on, allow rice to steam undisturbed for 5 minutes. [See, this step is a bit of a problem. In order to see whether all the water was evaporated and the rice was tender, I had to lift the lid. This let out the steam and when I returned the lid, obviously nothing was steaming undisturbed.]

6. Finish. Add reserved caramelized onions, and salt and pepper to taste. Add lemon juice and mix together. [Can also add toasted pine nuts or Greek yogurt, but I didn't. It was already late and I just wanted to eat dinner!]

The mujadara was good and well-flavored, but it just fell short of my expectations. One of the things that I love about mujadara is the strong onion flavor. The caramelized onions really make an impact. Here, the caramelized onions tasted so good, so sweet and full of onion flavor, on their own, but once I added them back in to the finished combination, it was like they lost all of their strong, sweet onion flavor and got diluted by everything else. That was a little disappointing, but that's mostly because of my expectations.

The other thing was that I remember the rice in mujadara I've had before maintained more of its consistency. Here it got really soft and tender, and melded with the lentils in many parts. The grains were just less pronounced. Maybe that's how it's supposed to be. I don't know. This wasn't really disappointing like the onion flavor, but I wasn't expecting it either.

Without those, this would just be a hearty, tasting, nicely spiced vegetarian dish. I would make it again, but as a side dish to other things most likely instead of a main dish. However, I think it's even more likely that I would just make an entire container of caramelized onions to add to lots of dishes (provided it lasted longer than a day).

CARAMELIZED CUMIN CARROTS AND ONIONS

As I said before, I wanted to balance out dinner by making something other than just grains and onions, so I decided to roast some carrots. I was inspired by this recipe from Bon Appetit to add some cumin seeds, which I thought would complement the mujadara well since it also used cumin seeds. Unfortunately, I thought we had a lot more carrots than we actually did, so I couldn't make an entire side dish out of carrots. I improvised and decided to use the 5 carrots we had, plus half of a large yellow onion.

To roast the vegetables, the ingredients were:

- cooking spray to coat pan ($0.05)
- 5 carrots ($0.75)
- 1/2 yellow onion ($0.35)
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil ($0.40)
- 1-1/2 tsp cumin seeds ($0.12)
- salt to taste ($0.05)

The total was around $1.75. It didn't actually make a lot of vegetables by the time they finished roasting. Just enough to fit in a rice bowl. One rice bowl for both of us.

The process here is very simple. Chop carrots and onions. Add olive oil, cumin seeds, and salt. Mix with your hands so everything is coated. Roast in oven for 40 minutes.

That's how it looked after 40 minutes. I guess I didn't spread out the vegetables that well since the ones on the ends burned a little bit. You were supposed to watch until they were tender and lightly caramelized, and turn the vegetables over once, but I just left them and let them roast. Unlike some of the recipe reviewers, mine definitely caramelized. Even though some of the "border pieces" got a little burnt and crispy, they were still pretty tasty.

Letting the vegetables roast this long (and especially without moving, so they got good and caramelized) was delicious. The carrots browned and were so sweet, as were the onions. Mixed with the smokier crispy pieces, there was a nice diversity of texture and flavor. We were definitely fans. It's great getting sweet vegetables like that without having to add any sugar at all. Next time, I'll just make more.

CARAMELIZATION WEEK

The caramelization cooking project was a success, even if the mujadara fell a little short of my expectations. My favorite part was the caramelized vegetables, and A's was also the burnt roasted carrots and onions. It would be really easy to roast vegetables like that again sometime, and certainly quicker than making mujadara!