vegan ⁽¹⁰⁾

I have an earlier version of this recipe kicking around and wanted to update now that I've got executive dysfunction AND a toddler. That's double not able to attend to my cooking, so I shifted things around and made this more of a dump-and-go recipe.

Mujadara is a vegan, middle-eastern dish of spiced lentils. It's name means "pockmarked" which is in reference to the rice looking pockmarked by the lentils. The spice profile used here is lebanese because yum. In the Notes section, I'll offer other sources of other spice profiles from other countries and cultures.

Since we still haven't yet had the Lantern Festival, I've been craving the tastes of China and Taiwan which my partner cooks always (it is his food culture) but tonight is my night to cook and I know this is a totally Americanized dish, but I've been listening to Code Switch and they claim that it is completely authentic to adapt to new flavors from a Chinese lens, so I'm going with it.

IN SEASON ALERT! It is winter and that means citrus is in season so that means they are cheap and plentiful!

As a person with executive dysfunction, I loathe grating citrus zest. One of the substitutes I like to make is a powdered citrus peel. I make this from the peel of citrus fruits I was otherwise eating anyway, and simply reserve the peel for this extra process. This is a /r/NoScrapLeftBehind kind of #frugal winner.

It is very simple to make: raw (as in not boiled to otherwise cooked) citrus peel (including pith) dehydrated and then ground up in a spice grinder.

Want that in more detail?

Let there be /r/NoScrapLeftBehind with this way to render apple cores and peels into usable jam. Cook it in the Instant Pot for easy cleanup and a generally hands-off experience. And to make it even more NoScrapLeftBehind, try cleaning your Instant Pot's inner pot with just water as a first rinse to get some jam-juice to drink.