What are some of the best Egyptian budget lunch recipes?

In Egypt, people have a system for choosing what they want to eat at lunch based on the time of month. After receiving their pay, people spend more money on food at the beginning or end of the month. They are likely to eat beef and chicken, along with different rice and pasta dishes and fast food.

They tend to curb their appetites in the middle of the month. The fifteenth is close, and they want to avoid going into debt until the next payment.

They stop eating out at the end of each month except for street food and will most likely eat budget meals.

In this matter, Egyptian food is getting the backs of its people. In fact, there are many delicious budget-friendly dishes in Egyptian food that require only a few simple ingredients and can be prepared quickly. Since they are budget meals, none contain beef or chicken, which is good.

Let’s jump into them.

Lentil Soup

In Egypt, this is the traditional winter soup. Everyone craves Lentil Soup when the weather gets cold. This soup is easy to prepare and highly nutritious, containing yellow lentils and many vegetables.

Lentil Soup goes well with Lentil Fattah – an Egyptian roasted noodle dish served with Lentil Soup and vinegar onions. We will also include this recipe.

Ingredients

  • Yellow lentils 1 cup
  • One medium-sized chopped onion
  • One large clove of minced garlic
  • Cut 1 large potato into small cubes
  • Cut two medium carrots into small cubes
  • Peel and chop two medium tomatoes into small pieces
  • Six and a half cups of hot water
  • Chicken broth, one cube
  • Olive oil two tablespoons
  • Half a teaspoon of turmeric
  • Cumin 1 teaspoon
  • Half a teaspoon of black pepper
  • Salt – 1 Tablespoon
  • One tablespoon of lime juice
  • Ghee, one tablespoon
  • 1/4 cup lattice pasta
  • Two loaves of Egyptian Bread (or pita bread, if this is not available).
  • Butter 4 tablespoons

Recipe

Place a large pot on medium heat and add two tablespoons of olive oil with the onions and garlic minced. Stir for about two minutes until the color starts to change. Add the potato and carrot cubes. Stir for one minute.

Add 1/4 cup of water to the vegetables and stir. Reduce the heat to low and simmer them for 5 minutes. At this point, the goal is to let the vegetables half-cook. They will be fully cooked later after adding the remaining ingredients.

Add the tomato cubes and stir with the vegetables. Let the mixture simmer for a few more minutes. Place a cup of yellow lentils into a large bowl, and wash it three or four more times with water until clean. Drain the water, and then add the lentils with the vegetables.

Mix the lentils and vegetables. The mixture can be seasoned with cumin, turmeric, cumin powder, and salt. Stir and mix. Cover the pot with a lid and add six cups of boiling water. Increase the heat to medium-high and cook the soup until the carrots and potatoes are softened.

Hand blenders can blend the lentils and vegetables into a soft, homogeneous soup. If you don’t have a hand blender, you can cool the soup and beat it with a food processor.

Your soup is now ready. Pour it into small bowls and drizzle olive oil and lime juice. Serve it hot. You can also make traditional Egyptian Lentil Soup.

Do you want to take it a step further? OK. Fine.

Add one tablespoon of ghee to a frying pan. Stir until the ghee melts, then add 1/4 cup of lattice spaghetti. Stir the pasta until it is golden brown, or for about two minutes. Pour 1 cup of lentil soup you have already prepared, mix with the roasted lattice, then bring to a boil.

Remove the pan and combine the lattice you cooked earlier with the Lentil Soup you prepared. Stir well and combine. Pour the hot soup into small bowls. Remember to drizzle olive oil or lime juice on top.

Cut two loaves of Egyptian bread or Pita bread into bite-sized pieces. In a frying pan, melt four tablespoons of butter and combine with the bread bits. Stir the bread until it turns golden brown and becomes crispy.

Add half a loaf of bread to the dish and a cup or more of hot lentil soup. Make sure to cover the entire bread. Serve the Fattah after letting it sit for two minutes to allow the bread to soften.

Yellow Koshary

As we’ve said a hundred times, Koshary is Egypt’s most popular local food. Koshary is available everywhere, and it’s a delicious meal that can be eaten on the go.

Alexandrian Koshary is another kind of Koshary that is not served at restaurants but is quite popular in Egyptian homes. This is the Yellow Koshary.

Yellow Koshary can be made when you have a limited budget or are broke. It’s delicious and simple to make. Boiled and fried eggs are a cheaper source of protein than chicken or beef.

It is unclear why Yellow Koshary was named after the regular Koshary. Both have lentils; that’s all I can think of. It’s possible this is not the case, as the regular Koshary contains brown lentils, while the Yellow Koshary uses yellow lentils.

Let’s make Yellow Koshary.

Ingredients

  • Yellow lentils 1 cup
  • 2 cups of Egyptian Rice
  • One small chopped onion
  • Three cups of hot water
  • 10 boiled eggs, peeled
  • 3 Tablespoons of vegetable oils
  • Butter 2 Tablespoons
  • Cumin – 1/2 teaspoon
  • Half a teaspoon of black pepper
  • Half a teaspoon of salt
  • One large sliced onion
  • One large onion cut into wedges
  • One tablespoon of lime juice
  • 1/4 cup vinegar

Recipe

Stir one teaspoon of oil into a pot with a tiny onion minced until the onions begin to turn a bit darker but not yet translucent. Add the cooked rice after soaking the rice in water and cleaning it. Stir the rice around for two minutes, until it’s shiny and thoroughly mixed with the oil.

Pour in three cups of boiling water and add a half teaspoon of cumin and a half tablespoon of salt. Bring the water to a rolling boil and mix well with the rice.

Pour two cups of lentils yellow into a large bowl and rinse them until the water is clean. Pour the water off and mix the lentils and rice. Stir the rice and lentils for one minute to ensure that they are thoroughly mixed. Reduce the heat to low and cook the mixture for 15 minutes.

Add two tablespoons of oil and two tablespoons of butter to a frying pan. Stir until the butter melts and the oil heats up. Add the boiled, peeled eggs to the pan. Stir-fry the eggs for 2 minutes. The eggs are rolled because they fry when they move around in the pan. Continue rolling the eggs till they turn golden brown. Remove them from the heat, and sprinkle with salt and black pepper. Put the eggs to one side for now.

The last step is to prepare the topping, which is fried onions.

Add vegetable oil to a frying pan until it is half full. Turn the heat up to medium-high. Add the onion slices after the oil has heated for a few minutes. The onions should be fried for about two to three minutes. They should be stirred frequently until they reach that golden color and are crispy. Remove the onions from the oil using a strainer and allow them to cool for a few minutes.

It’s time to mix all the ingredients. Add the rice/lentil mix to a large platter and spread it out evenly. The fried rolled egg mixture should be placed around the rice. Top it off with fried onions.

Vinegar onion wedges are a great side dish to serve with lentil soup and lentil fattah.

Slice a large onion into wedges. Separate the layers and place them into a bowl. Rub the onions for one minute with a tablespoon of salt. This will help to tame that tangy and sour flavor of the onions.

The bowl and the onions can be cleaned with water. Mix a quarter cup of vinegar with one tablespoon of lime juice. Sprinkle salt, cumin, and black pepper. Stir in the onions and vinegar, then let the bowl sit for 10 mins to enhance the flavor. Serve with lentil soup and fattah.

Besara

This word is a proper name for a green dish with fried onion on top, served with Egyptian bread.

Besara was a dish that people ate a lot of in the past. It was on the verge of extinction due to the increasing popularity of fast food, which made people less interested in eating home-cooked meals and not only low-budget non-beef dishes such as Besara.

Besara has a fighting chance of surviving because so many YouTubers are addressing it in their cooking channels and trying to preserve one of the most delicious oriental Egyptian dishes.

Here’s how you make Besara.

Ingredients

  • Breaking beans, 1/4 kg
  • Buy one bunch of minced Dill
  • Parsley mince – 1 bunch
  • Coriander mince 1 bunch
  • 3 Tablespoons of vegetable oils
  • 2 medium-sized onions sliced
  • Five cloves garlic
  • Salt – 1 teaspoon
  • Sugar, 1 teaspoon
  • Cumin 1 teaspoon
  • Black pepper, one teaspoon
  • One teaspoon of crushed dried mint
  • Marjoram 1 teaspoon
  • Cardamom, 1/4 teaspoon
  • 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon
  • Allspice, 1/4 teaspoon
  • Fennel, 1/4 teaspoon
  • White sesame seeds – 1 tablespoon

Recipe

Before attempting this recipe, clean the beans several times and soak them for at least two hours in water.

Add water to a large pot and place it on high heat. Fill the pot halfway with water. Bring the water to a rolling boil with a quarter-cup of beans, five garlic cloves, and sliced onions. Reduce the heat, cover the pot, and simmer the mixture for 30 to 40 minutes.

After the beans are cooked, turn off the heat and add the minced herbs, including parsley, coriander, Dill, and Dill. Stir the spices with the beans and cover the pot. Leave it for 5 minutes to allow the flavors of the herbs to soak in.

It is now time to season your beans. Add one teaspoon each of black pepper, cumin, and crushed mint. Also, add a pinch each of cinnamon, allspice, and fennel. All of these ingredients should be whisked together with the beans.

Beat the beans with a hand-blender or food processor a few times until they become a soft green mixture. Turn on the heat and return the Besara back to the pot. Add 1/4 cup of water and stir with Besara. Let it simmer for 5 minutes.

Place three tablespoons of vegetable oil in a pan with one large onion sliced and fry for a few moments until golden brown. Divide the onions into two equal portions. Stir the Besara into one portion of the onions and turn the heat off.

In the same pan, toast one tablespoon of white sesame in one tablespoon of oil for two minutes or until golden brown. Mix the sesame seeds with the rest of the fried onions.

Pour the Besara into a deep dish or casserole. It can be garnished with the onion/sesame mix. Serve Besara with Egyptian bread or pita, spiced tomatoes, and green onion.