Recipe

Tangy Red Lentils Recipe

Add Step-by-Step Photos	Scrumptious / All my dishes 2 years, 5 months ago The perennial vegetarian dilemma - you want to make a quick dinner, but there's nothing quick and easy for the protein part of the meal (no beans pre-soaked, etc.) and you really don't want another veggie burger. These lentils cook up quick, have a ... More Prep:7m Cook:30m Servings:5	Scrumptious
	vegan vegetarian protein easy quick healthy cheap side maindish colorful

uncooked red lentils

Served warm with bro

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Ingredients

2 T. olive oil

2 T. lemon juice

splash of mirin (optional - can use a little honey instead)

1 T. rice vinegar

1/4 t. turmeric

pinch salt

pinch pepper

2-4 green onions, chopped fine

2 cups water

1 cup red lentils, rinsed, picked over, and drained

1 strip kombu (optional)

1 clove garlic, minced

Directions

Combine olive oil, lemon juice, mirin, rice vinegar, turmeric, salt, pepper, and green onions. Set aside.

Combine water and lentils in a small/medium pot.

Bring to boil over high heat.

Once boiling, give lentils a stir, then reduce heat to low.

Add garlic and kombu. (Kombu is a type of seaweed. Adding it makes the lentils easier to digest - less gas!)

Cover pot and simmer 30 minutes. (Keep an eye on them - they like to boil over.)

After 30 minutes, check lentils. (They should be soft and a bit mushy - they won't hold their shape any longer.)

Drain any excess water. (In my experience there shouldn't be any - your lentils should be somewhere between soupy and thick.)

Remove kombu strip and discard.

Toss with vinaigrette.

Serve hot (with rice, perhaps) or cool and serve over a bed a greens.

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Comments

shirleyoma 2 years, 5 months ago said:
Love Lentils! This sounds good!

jo_jo_ba 2 years, 5 months ago said:
Oh this recipe is great! I make it without the kombu and it's great comfort food.

heatherbudapest 2 years, 5 months ago said:
Mmm, maybe I'll try this tonight with brown rice and the dandelion greens I just weeded in the garden :)

heatherbudapest 2 years, 5 months ago said:
Hey, so I made these for dinner just now, and ate them with dandelion greens, brown basmati rice, and a whole wheat roti from the Indian market. I have to say they were outstanding. I made a few changes, because I can never do anything by the book . . . Since I didn't have any green onions, I used about half a red onion in my doubled recipe. I omitted the kombu because I didn't have it on hand, but upped the amount of turmeric a bit and added it to the cooking pot instead of to the vinaigrette (I hear that turmeric also helps you digest legumes when they are cooked with it.) I used a bit more salt than you do, and quite a lot of pepper, and a little cayenne. And when the whole thing was finished, because I didn't have green onion, it looked a little bland in color, so I ran to the garden, where I have a profusion of herbs, and clipped some fresh tarragon and mint, which I snipped into the lentils. Delicious!! One question I had, though -- how do you drain the excess water? I wasn't sure if you just tip the cooking pot over the sink, or if you actually use a strainer . . .

Thanks so much for the excellent, healthful recipe! I can't tell you how long those red lentils had been sitting in the cupboard :)

heatherbudapest 2 years, 5 months ago said:
PS. I know you love bitter greens too -- do you ever cook dandelion greens? They are *SO BITTER*! But they were palatable with your delicious tangy lentils and the rice.

scrumptious 2 years, 5 months ago said:
Hurray! I'm so glad you tried and enjoyed them! It's nice to share recipes with you even from so far away. Your tweaks sound wonderful; I love recipes that can adapt to whatever is in the cupboard.

About the excess water - the instruction to drain is in the original recipe, but I have never had excess water. I left it in there because presumably someone at some point in recipe testing had some. So it doesn't specify in the OR (original recipe) and I can't say from personal experience... Did you have excess water when you cooked them?

heatherbudapest 2 years, 5 months ago said:
It's funny, I had a little water in there, and I wasn't sure if it was "excess" -- the thing about lentils is that they can settle to the bottom of the pot, but then if you give them a stir, they reabsorb the water, or at least most of it. Anyway, I tried to pour a bit of the lentils through a strainer as an experiment, but it really splattered, leaving little dots of turmeric & lentil on my shirt! :) I think I'll just skip that next time, because I ended up just dumping them back in the pot right after that, and they were perfect. I think I was expecting them to be a little stiffer because of the texture I saw in your photo of them on the salad, and they are softer and more like the consistency of dal when you have first cooked them. I added my photo, so folks can see both textures. :)

softgrey 2 years, 4 months ago said:
Heather...
seems like they would be 'thicker' when cold...as served over the salad?...
perhaps that explains the difference in texture...
they look a lot more 'watery' in the 'served warm' pic that scrumptious posted...

both ways sound and look delish!

x-softie

scrumptious 2 years, 4 months ago said:
Oh! Just wanted to make sure credit was given where credit was due - the gorgeous "served warm" pic of the lentils as part of a yummy meal was prepared and taken by Heather!

gabe 2 years, 3 months ago said:
Super yummy. i figured I'd make 1 cup, and eat half of it tonight, and save half for a snack tomorrow... oops, that didn't go quite as planned, I ate it all tonight (: