Help Me, O Mighty Blogosphere!

One of the great food failures of my life is that I don't care for lentils.  I can't even take a picture of lentils because I don't even have any in my cupboard.  I feel that I should learn to like them because they are both healthy and inexpensive.  Help!  Please send me your favorite lentil recipes! Whoever sends me the recipe that converts me to lentilphile will win a small mystery giveaway package...

(Picture from Treehugger)

Comments

[Sarah]

I have a lentil recipe. :) Our nephew from Peru is staying with us and he told me to combine cooked lentils with sauteed tomatoes, garlic and onions (with salt and pepper and whatever other spice like cumin). You can toss it with chicken or experiment really easily with this. Good luck! A 16 oz bag of them can make 3 suppers if you are adding other ingredients!

http://fightingwindmills.wordpress.com/recipes/

[the procrastinating girl]

i LOVE lentils!!! and now that im a veggie, i cannot live without them...eat them twice a week at least. is that TMI? anyway, i have a great recipe for curry lentil soup that i make all the time in winter...id like to say it isnt applicable now on july 2, but seeing as it very well may HAIL tonight...maybe u would like a copy??

[Natalie]

This is my favorite lentil soup recipe
http://woolanthropy.blogspot.com/2008/11/summer-autumn.html

Good luck on learning to loving the lentil. I think they are yummy.

[Maiz]

Here's my favorite lentil recipe:

Take some old, recycled denim or corduroy
Cut it into a rectangle that's about 5" by 10"
Fold it in half inside out and sew it around the edges, leaving about 1-2" opening.
Turn it right side out through the opening.
Fill it with LENTILS!
Sew the opening closed.
Repeat from the beginning.

If you don't love lentils after this, there is no hope.

[Frogdancer]

I add red lentils to bolognaise and pumpkin soup/pumpkin pasta sauce (which is just thick pumpkin soup, but my kids adore it. They'd actually kill someone if I told them that if they did so they'd have pumpkin pasta for dinner.)

The sauces are all red/orange so I figure they can't be seen and what the kids don't know won't hurt them. Plus red lentils don't need to be soaked beforehand, so they're easy.

[kristina]

I'm not a lentil fan either, but the lentil side dish here (lentils with herbs and spinach with a bit of plain yogurt dressing) is lovely--you don't have to make the salmon to enjoy the lentils:

http://www.foodtv.ca/recipes/recipedetails.aspx?dishid=751

There's a nice picture is one of Jamie's cookbooks, but I can't remember which one, as it was from the library. It was actually the picture that convinced me to try it--otherwise I'm sure I would have skipped right over it having seen the word 'lentils'!

And if you do like this one best, don't worry about the giveaway, as I couldn't bear for you to pay the air mail postage again!

K x

[Georgia]

My favorite way to eat lentils is to sprout them and add them to salads. You might try them this way if you haven't already. Try them at different stages to see at what point the flavor is best for you (young sprouts or more mature). Just soak them over night rinse and start tasting a few everyday for the next two or three days (rinsing each day)until you see if you like them. A few on salads is the way I like them best. Hope this helps...

[Beth]

Oh! I've got two for you to try. The first is a salad we eat on new year's day for good luck (it's actually the Good Luck Lentil Salad from the Moosewood Celebrates cookbook.)

The other is a simple dinner of cooked lentils, with sauteed onion and garlic, salt and pepper to taste and served over rice, topped with fresh tomatoes. Sounds similar to Sarah's recommendation above. My brother made it for me when I visited him in Panama. He was in the Peace Corps at the time - it was a staple in his community. We now make this dish a lot; so healthy, delicious, filling and inexpenive.

[jessica]

In the winter lentil soup is my favorite (http://turkeycookies.blogspot.com/2009/01/soup-swap-january.html). I could eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner when it snows. Ok, maybe not breakfast!

[Michelle]

I was a bit anti-lentil as well, but then I realised they are cheaper, quicker, and healthier than minced beef. I've found you can pretty much replace most 'wet' minced beef dishes with red lentils.

Around here we like lentil Shepherd's Pie - make as per a normal one by sauteeing onion, garlic, etc. Deglaze with some red wine and add lentils, bay leaf, salt, pepper, oregano and some water - cook for about 20 minutes or until softened. Add a bag of frozen mixed veg (or fresh if you prefer), and remove from heat. Spoon into a deep oven dish, cover with piles and piles of fluffy mashed potato clouds, and bake in the oven for about 25 minutes or until bubbling around the edges.

Simple, quick, cheap, delicious... I can give exact quantities if you prefer, but you can probably just adapt your normal Shep Pie recipe. :)

And as everyone else said, you can hide them in most thick soups/stews. If you want to try green lentils, then you'll have to go with a slow cooked soup like green lentil and ham hock. For Indian, any dhal recipe usually uses both red and yellow split lentils..and so on and so forth!

I spent an entire winter eating oodles of lentil recipes from a book called "A Passion for Pulses" which is divided into regions (South American, North American, European etc.) My favourite joke at the time was, "Culinarily speaking, I'm riding around the world on the back of a lentil." It was really only by forcing myself to use them that I was unable to unlock their magic. :)

Michelle

[The Coffee Lady]

lentils are only really slightly bearable with sausage

[Andrea]

How 'bout Indian red lentils? (1 tsp. o. oil, 1 cup chopped onion, 4 cups H2O, 1 lb. dried red lentils - rinsed and picked over, 1 13.5 oz can light cocount milk, 1 bay leaf)

1. Saute onion.
2. Add everything else and bring to a boil.
3. Reduce heat and simmer, 40 min. or until soft.
4. Remove bay leaf and season with 1 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper.

makes 10 side dish servings.

I serve it with curried greens (sauted onion, tomatoe and kale with curry) & garlic naan. I'm always surprised by how much I like it. The sharp flavors of the curried greens offset the mild, and slightly coconuty flavor of the lentils.

Good luck!

p.s. I love Maiz's comment. Funny!

[Jessica Levitt]

Please post your favorites when you've tried them. I actually like lentils more than any other bean when prepared well, but I don't really know how to do a good job. Sometimes I get so frustrated feeding kids b/c I want them to be open to new foods but I hesitate to waste my cooking things I know they probably won't eat.