Koshari: rice, lentils and pasta with spiced tomato

Koshari is Egypt’s everyday dish, sold from street carts and cooked at home, and it is store-cupboard food to its bones: rice, lentils and pasta, piled up and finished with a spiced tomato sauce, a sharp garlic vinegar called da’ah and a heap of crisp onions. In December 2025 UNESCO added it to its list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity, describing it as a filling, budget-friendly meal.

Its roots are older than the usual story. The name is generally traced to the Indian khichri, and it is often said Indian soldiers brought it with the British army. But in 1853, nearly thirty years before the British occupation, the explorer Richard Burton recorded that people in Suez ate lentils and rice for breakfast, a mixture “called in India Kichhri”. The pasta, the tomato and the street-cart form came later, and nobody can say exactly when.

It looks like a lot of components. It is really three pans of plain things and two small flavour bombs, and the flavour bombs are what make it.

1. The da’ah first, so it has time. In a mug: 30 ml of the vinegar, 2 g of the garlic granules, a pinch of cumin, a pinch of salt and a tablespoon of water. Leave it to steep.
2. The onions. Heat the oil hard in the first pan. Add the dried onion and stand over it: pale to golden to burnt in about ninety seconds. Pull it off at deep gold, lift the onion out onto something absorbent, and keep the oil.
3. The sauce, in the onion oil. Back on a medium heat with the rest of the garlic, the cumin and the chilli for thirty seconds, until it smells. Then the tomatoes, purée, sugar and a pinch of salt. Simmer ten minutes until thick, stir in the last 15 ml of vinegar, and decant into a bowl.
4. The rice, in the second pan. Rinse it, add 350 ml of water and a pinch of salt, bring to the boil, lid on, heat right down for 12 minutes, then off the heat with the lid on while you do the rest.
5. Lentils and pasta, in the first pan. Rinse the lentils, cover with about 1.2 litres of water and simmer 15 minutes. Add the macaroni and a good pinch of salt and cook until both are tender, about 10 minutes more. Drain, and warm the chickpeas through in the same pan.
6. Build it. Rice, then lentils, pasta and chickpeas, then the tomato sauce, a spoonful of da’ah, and the crisp onions on top. Everyone adds more da’ah and chilli to taste.

The vinegar is not optional. Without it this is three starches in tomato. With it, the whole thing lifts. Egyptian cooks use white vinegar; cider vinegar is a touch softer and works.

Cook this to the meal. Rice is the one thing in this cupboard you should not keep without a fridge. See the rice page for why reheating does not rescue it. Portion the dry rice to the number of people eating.

Serves 4.