Renée’s Spartan Lentils

Maybe your experience with lentils begins and ends with the self-serve salads at your corporate cafeteria or Whole Foods. Maybe you tried lentils and found them kind of tasteless. Hopefully not! Because lentils are far from tasteless. They are super easy to make with five minutes of prep time and twenty minutes of unassisted cook time. They can be served as a salad or an appetizer. And they're a filling way to eat clean. Are they mac and cheese and fried chicken? No. They are the opposite of greasy and loaded with simple carbs. Personally, I do *sincerely crave* my mom's lentils. They're my version of comfort food.

With a recipe this simple, you are showcasing the beans themselves as much as possible. And your results may only be as good as the lentils you buy. There is a huge variation, I find, in how Goya lentils turn out, depending upon the freshness of the lentils themselves. My mom counsels me to buy the french version of lentils, which are smaller and darker green than Goya lentils, but honestly they can be difficult to find at the store. The last thing I want to do is send anyone on a wild goose chase. Just know that fresh lentils will cook more evenly, and stale lentils may turn out a bit tough in the center. This is not the end of the world. Sometimes things have a nuttier texture, and that's all. If the lentils you get do turn out a bit tough, I find that they work better as a salad. Try putting some vinaigrette on them or even a little bit of feta cheese, and see how you like them.

As for the self-serve aisle at the store, by all means get your lentils there if you are short on time and you just want a quick lunch. But please, know that you are overpaying by many multiples. Lentils are super inexpensive. A bag of uncooked lentils is anywhere from $1.50 to $2 per pound. The salad bar is probably charging you 10x that amount if not more, for something that cooks with minimal effort. I also find that salad bar lentils are either not seasoned at all, or they are slathered in what I can only assume is canola oil or some other super cheap vegetable oil, which is going to negate much of the healthfulness of your lentils. The salad places are just counting on your unfamiliarity with beans to gouge you. It is their arbitrage opportunity.

There are all sorts of ways to season lentils because so many people and cultures eat lentils. Seasonings vary across continents from Mexican to Chilean to Ethiopian to Indian to Middle Eastern. The rest of the world eats beans, y'all! And if you're an experienced bean cook, you maybe think that a lentil recipe is no recipe at all. It's just boiling food and adding seasonings, right? Does that even count as a recipe? I don't know. But I do know that Americans often don't know how to make lentils. Anytime I encounter someone who can't make lentils, I want to teach them. Everyone should know how simple it can be. You don't need to ace the trivia night quiz on global lentil recipes. Just start simple.

I took my mom's super simple lentils for granted growing up. The sun will come up tomorrow, and when I turn around, the world will still be there, as it is now. This pretty much sums up how I felt about the next delicious batch of lentils. There would always be good lentils... That was growing up. Then in my early twenties, I continued to live under the assumption that there would always be good lentils in my life, even though I had no idea where to get them or how to make them right. I eventually made lentils myself a few times, and they turned out hard, chalky, and frankly, inedible. I never understood why, and I tried not to think about it, because it just felt like a hurdle that I didn't even see coming. Who can't make lentils, right?

You don't know what you've got until it's gone, as they say. And boy did I feel bizarre the first time I felt a desperate craving for lentils, but lentils were nowhere to be found. I still remember, I was vacationing with my in-laws somewhere near Palm Beach, in a Marriott time share type thing. We went to some of the acclaimed restaurants in the lush manicured parts of town, and while the food was delicious, after a few days it was all just too salty, fatty, sweet, or some combination of those attributes. I just wanted some home cooking: Real Food. I convinced everyone that we should try a "local" restaurant that wasn't for tourists.

So we drove around the surrounding area while I searched for Latin food places on Google maps. Sure enough, we found this amazingly cozy, tidy place tucked away in a strip mall in the suburbs surrounding Palm Beach. The kind of place that has a regular weekday lunch crowd, and a small dance floor in the back that you just know gets rowdy with a tight-knit bunch on weekends. I ordered a lentil soup, and it was just so delicious. It was nourishing, settled my stomach, gave me strength and hope that maybe I can eat in a way that won't kill me. Eating high-end restaurant food is delicious, but there's a nagging voice after any restaurant meal, I find, that says, "You can't eat that way forever."

So many times in my life, I have tried to make lentils. Tried and failed. It was one of those fundamental disconnects that just didn't make sense. I mean, they're lentils. What could go wrong? I beat back the shame and I asked Mãe one day, so let's talk about what could go wrong: First of all, there are variations in freshness of the beans. Fresh lentils will cook faster, fluff up and tenderize more easily. Stale lentils can cook much longer and fail to tenderize evenly. But according to Mãe the biggest mistake I kept making was to salt the lentils first. I don't know the science behind it, but I always added salt last now. I used to add salt while adding my seasonings. But salt really dries out the lentils during the cooking process.

If the lentils turn out badly, do not fret! And whatever you do, don't throw your lentils out! Even if they turn out hard in the center, paste on the outside, a mushy disgusting mess, that's OK. Just make soup out of them. Lentils are the perfect base to thicken a soup. Lentil soup has a robust capacity to absorb tastes and textures. It is like the frittata of soups. On more than one Sunday night have I taken the week's leftovers, mixed them with lentils, water, a cube of veggie bullion, and made a quick, delicious meal out of literal scraps.

Lentils make a fantastic salad base also, as I mentionioned. Chilled lentils, a little vinaigrette, some shredded beets, daikon or carrots? Slice up a hardboiled egg or use leftover chicken and fish. You can mix your lentil salad with micro-greens like watercress or sprouts. It's just such a versatile food to have around in your fridge. For the parents out there (solidarity) you should know that lentils are a great baby food. The little ones tend to like them and they're small enough that even young babies who don't know how to chew very well can eat.