Ful Medames

I watch a lot of No Reservations, and in Tony's Egypt episode, he ate this awesome street food breakfast that sounds like "fool". It looked delicious--a reddish bean-y mixture topped with a fried or hard-boiled egg, scooped up with lots of pita bread and eaten by, according to Tony, a large part of the Egyptian population every morning. Hearty, healthy, filling, and tasty.

So I set out to find I recipe, and I think I found a good one after looking through recipe after recipe (and alternate spelling after alternate spelling). Do I know if it's super-authentic? No, I've never had real ful, but it was really tasty.

To compare it to anything else, it feels like having refried beans for breakfast, but no lard and way better. This dish probably, seriously, has at least half of your day's worth of fiber in it. This is why beans and lentils are allowed on low-carb, haha.

Ingredients:

1 pound dried, peeled fava beans (also called broan beans--try to find small ones, these are most authentic)
1/2 cup red lentils
1/2 large onion, chopped
1 cup tomato, chopped
3-4 cloves of garlic
1 t. ground cumin
Salt to taste
2-3 T. lemon juice

For garnish: olive oil, butter, a fried or hard-boiled egg, or scallions

Instructions:

Soak your dried beans for 8-10 hours. If you want to have ful the next morning for breakfast, do this 24 hours before. This is where my recipe went wrong--my store didn't have dried fava beans (no matter how hard I looked, they never appeared!), so I had to buy canned ones, and this led to watery ful that I had to cook down. Basically place the dried beans in a pot, cover with water an inch or two above the beans, cover the pot, and let sit.

These are my dumb canned beans. They are large and not authentic, but I had no other option at my store.


After the beans have soaked, place beans, lentils, onion, tomato, garic, and cumin in a slow-cooker and cover over with water 2 inches above the beans (If you use canned beans like me, do not add so much water!). Cover the slow-cooker. Cook on low for 10 hours overnight.


In the morning, most of the water should be gone. Stir in 2-3 T. of lemon juice, and mash the mixture with a potato masher. It should be the consistency of refried beans (I didn't know, so I'm telling you). Excuse my different pot--I had to transfer all of mine to the stove to cook off the extra water.


Place in a shallow bowl and top with your garnish of choice! Eat with pita bread if you are not following low-carb.


Being the heat freak I am, I put in a hearty teaspoon of sambal oelek, and could have added more.


I waited ALL morning for this and it was so worth it. I would have eaten more if it weren't so late in the morning when it was finally cooked down.