Sayadieh

Name: Sayadieh
Total time: 1 h 10 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Egyptian
Ingredients: 700 g Firm white fish fillets; 3 large Onions, thinly sliced; 400 g Basmati or long-grain rice; 1 tsp each Ground cumin and coriander; 1 Cinnamon stick; 50 g Pine nuts or slivered almonds; 4 tbsp Oil; 2 tsp Salt; 1/2 tsp Black pepper; 1 Lemon

Coastal fisherman's rice: fish fried and set aside, its stock used to cook rice stained dark and sweet with deeply browned onions, then piled back together with toasted nuts.

Source

Recette de Egyptian home kitchens · 🏺 Traditionnel · Everyday Egyptian cooking — the fava beans, bread, greens and slow tomato pots that fill tables from Cairo apartments to Delta villages.

Egyptian · coastal dish — An ownerless traditional dish, so no cook is credited. The cited article confirms sayadieh as a fish-and-rice dish built on deeply caramelised onions, eaten along the eastern Mediterranean coast including Egypt. Quantities and method here are this book's own.

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⏱ 70 min🍽 4 portions🔥 610 kcal🇪🇬 Égypte

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Season the fish with salt, cumin and pepper. Fry in oil until just cooked, then lift out and keep warm. Save the pan.
In the same pan, fry the onions over medium heat for 20–25 minutes until genuinely dark brown — far past golden, stopping short of burnt.
💡 That colour is the whole dish — it is what dyes the rice and gives sayadieh its sweetness. Rushing this step makes pale, flat rice.
Lift out a third of the onions for the top. Add 900 ml water and the cinnamon to the rest and simmer 10 minutes to make a dark stock.
Strain the stock, return it to the pot, taste for salt and stir in the rinsed rice and ground coriander.
Cover and cook on low 15–18 minutes until the liquid is gone, then rest off the heat 10 minutes without lifting the lid.
Toast the nuts in a dry pan. Pile the rice on a platter, lay the fish on top, and scatter the reserved onions and nuts. Serve with lemon.

💡 Astuces

Tahini sauce sharpened with lemon and garlic is the standard partner — Egyptians spoon it over the fish, not the rice.
Nut-free: leave the nuts off entirely. Nothing else in the dish depends on them.
Sayadieh is shared with Lebanon and Palestine. The Egyptian version leans darker on the onions and lighter on the spice.