I personally don’t like mjaddara but if you at all want to try the more traditional preparation you need to put way less rice next time. This looks like a rice dish with lentils and not a lentil porridge with rice giving it consistency. You want the rice to soak up way more liquid.

As an adult making lentils I never add rice at all. Lentils are plenty of carbs as it is. You can go more soupy or more porridgy. Funny how it’s cheap comfort food now but as a kid I pretty much hated it.

If you don’t want to caramelize onions, you don’t have to. My rough, zero thought, not strictly traditional, lentils recipe is more like this:

Wash/soak some lentils for 20 minutes to an hour. 300 grams dry red lentils as an example quantity
Chop up a small onion, any kind, finer is better, rougher is fine Slice up a whole head of garlic (or less if you’re less garlic inclined) Lentils go into a pot, with enough water to cover them once over (I just eyeball it). I have an electric kettle so I pour in boiling water. You can start with cold water, it’s fine. You can add water to get it more soupy or let it become chunkier later. Just throw the onions and garlic in. They should cook annd soften over time. If you really really like garlic you can add it a bit later so less of the kick cooks off. In my case I just add more later lmao

I usually use red onions and watching them lose their color is a decent indicator of getting closer to completion. Stir so it doesn’t burn.

And here you just wait. You can add some extras if you want here, but you just do dishes and stuff until the lentils become soft. I don’t know what to say here except let them cook until they’re done.

I sometimes add tomato paste here, or any leftover leafy greens (kale, spinach, sorry grandma I never have chard on hand), I’ve thrown in like a tablespoon of dried oats before, it’s really just a flexible base for different ideas. Mjaddara is the variation with rice. I’ve once blended my lentil soup with an immersion blender for a very different texture. It’s just a base.

I eat this pretty regularly. If you’re on hard times you can eat a lot of this stuff for very cheap and it’s pretty nutritious and low effort. Lots of fiber and protein in there as well.

The most important thing taste wise is probably the seasoning. I appreciate you probably can’t run out and buy the standard Lebanese Seven Spice blend, but you can absolutely throw it together yourself. And that’s what will make it taste like what I know from my childhood. It’s very allspice heavy. I once ran out while cooking something else and used about half “garam masala” and half allspice and it was a bit fennelly but a reasonable substitute.