← For Teachers
🌍 Country of the Week · A Spin the Globe Teacher's Guide
Lebanon
LebanonAsia · This week's dish comes from Beirut
About Lebanon
Lebanese cooking is the generous heart of the Levant, famous for its mezze, dozens of small plates like hummus, tabbouleh, and kibbeh meant for sharing. Olive oil, lemon, garlic, and fresh herbs brighten a table where hospitality means abundance.
Lebanese villages still put up the mouneh, the year's provisions, over the summer: olives, jams, tomato paste, dried aubergine, vine leaves, and kishk, cracked wheat fermented with milk and yoghurt then dried on rooftop sheets and ground to a powder that turns into soup all winter. Zaatar is picked wild, dried, and ground with sumac and sesame.
The measure of a tabbouleh is its proportions: it is a parsley salad with a little bulgur in it, not a bulgur salad with parsley scattered over. That habit of restraint runs through the mezze, where a table fills with a dozen small plates that arrive when they are ready rather than in any order, and nobody is expected to finish anything.
The wider picture: From street-cart woks to slow monastery kitchens.
This week's dish: Mujadara
Lentils and rice under a deep pile of slow-caramelized onions, the Levant’s humble masterpiece.
Serves 4 · Prep 10 min · Cook 45 min · Difficulty: easy
See the full recipe: ingredients, steps and dietary swaps →
Grown-up jobs: any step that uses a hot stove, oven, boiling water, or a sharp knife is for a teacher or parent. Children can measure, mix, and assemble.
Discussion prompts
1. Find Lebanon on a world map or globe. It sits in Asia. Which oceans or neighboring countries does it touch, and roughly how far is it from where you live?
2. Mujadara comes from Beirut, in Lebanon. Read its ingredient list together. Which of those foods do you think are grown or raised nearby, and how might the country's climate and landscape explain that?
3. Read the short story behind Mujadara. How have the people, trade routes, and history of Lebanon shaped what ends up on the plate there?
4. Compare Mujadara to a dish your own family cooks. What is similar, what is different, and what one question would you ask a family in Lebanon about how they make and share it?
5. After you cook Mujadara, add Lebanon to a classroom map and give it a stamp. Write down one fact about its food or geography that you did not know this morning.
🌍 Spin the Globe · Geography through food · spintheglobeofficial.com/for-teachers