Would you like to celebrate New Year's Eve with a good dish of lentils like they do in Italy? Why not? In reality, any occasion is good to cook this healthy and versatile legume, although our Mediterranean neighbors eat them to say goodbye to the year as an omen of good luck. This good reputation began with the ancient Romans, who gave a small leather bag with lentils, hoping that they would become gold coins, although they did not begin to eat them to attract good luck until the Middle Ages. We do not know if fortune falls on the one who does it, but what is certain is that taking lentils, a basic source of protein, carbohydrates, fiber, minerals, vitamins and antioxidants, will not harm your health at all.
Lens culinaris (a Latin name that recalls its biconvex lens shape, from which Spanish and also French and English, lentilles and lentils) are one of the first plants cultivated by humans. The historian Herodotus already speaks of Egyptian inscriptions that stipulate lentils among the foods that the workers who worked in the pyramids should receive and his colleague Appian in the 2nd century AD, says that the Romans took lentils from Egypt at funerals because they could get them, nothing more. and nothing less than making man “happy and fun.” Is that why the saying 'if they give you lentils, why are you complaining'?
Jokes aside, since lentils are produced in different places, they have a shorter cooking cycle than other legumes, they can be prepared in a variety of ways, and they are also rich and nutritious. Nowadays, they are one of the world's favorite legumes, with a high rate of consumption in the Mediterranean. But do we know how to get the most out of them? Do we know the cooking times? Is it necessary to soak them? Is it true that sometimes we don't take advantage of the iron they contain?
This week we are going to discover the 10 mistakes that we should never make when cooking them so that when serving them we can calmly say: 'Here are the lentils, if you don't want them, leave them'. Because we know that no one will leave them.
1. Not knowing which lentils to choose
There is no need to get overwhelmed when choosing lentils. There are more than 50 different varieties of Lens Culinaris, which can be classified, for example, by their size. The seeds are between 3 and 6 millimeters in diameter in the small ones. In a dark tone we find the prized pardina and beluga (so called because it resembles the caviar of the same name). Also the one from the French region of volcanic soil of Puy (dark green, fine texture and sweet flavor with a spicy touch), and the verdina, “ideal for purees and creams,” says chef Josean Alija (Nerua) in his Blog. The seeds of the large ones are between 6 and 9 mm in diameter. One of the largest is the queen, which is yellow-green in color and has a flattened shape. The owner of the Viridiana restaurant, Abraham García, prefers to choose large ones “to give greater elegance to the dish because the view is also important” but he assures that you can find sublime ones of any size. The chef opts for cooking lentils raw and only resorting to glass jars or canned ones (“less tasty”) when there is no other choice. He also rejects those that are marketed without skin, of colorful colors, "a lentil does not have to be the rainbow, since it does not have skin it has less flavor and tends to fall apart."
2. Not cleaning them well before cooking
Although raw lentils are sold clean today, it doesn't hurt to take a look to eliminate any leaves, impurities or stones "that could end up taking us to the dentist," warns Abraham García, chef at the Madrid restaurant Viridiana and a charismatic character, who in Its website proclaims that for 40 years it has been “offering a cuisine outside the fickle weather vane of fashion: tasty, robust and at odds.” It is also advisable to eliminate broken or spoiled lentils and it is important to rinse them with enough water before cooking them.
3. Should lentils be soaked? Pay attention to the type of water
Although it is not excessively long, to speed up the cooking process of lentils, some experts recommend soaking them for an hour before cooking. This is the case of Abraham García, who considers it essential to submerge them in water "the day before cooking, for about 8 or 10 hours, to intensify their flavor." In the book The Cooking of Legumes, signed and edited by the Fundació Alícia, they consider it sufficient, if desired, to do it for one hour. Small and soft varieties such as Puy can do without this measure.
To cook these legumes we will choose a pan wide enough so that they can form a thin layer "and thus they will heat evenly and the bottom ones will not be crushed" explains Harold McGee in his book Cooking and Food. For both soaking and cooking, it is important to use weakly mineralized water. “The higher the hardness of the water, the more time they will need to cook,” they say at the Fundació Alícia.
4. Making mistakes in quantities and cooking times
In The Legume Kitchen they tell us that it is advisable to use 500 grams of lentils per 2-3 liters of water in traditional cooking. We add a minimum of 4 times more water, since if we add less it will evaporate and the lentils may burn. “If they run out of water, you have to add more, always hot,” say the experts in this book, which is a didactic reference in this field. It is recommended to use about 50 or 80 grams of product per person, because when cooking they multiply their weight about two and a half times per unit.
Regarding cooking time, guru Harold McGee advises: “Because lentils are flat, thin, and have thin shells, “they soften much faster than most legumes, in an hour or less, because the water only has "It has to penetrate one or two millimeters on each side." The time varies depending on the variety of lentil or the type of water used, but in a conventional pot it ranges from half an hour to an hour, according to the calculations of the Alícia Foundation. Abraham García talks about an hour and a half, “it's not much because the result is worth it; It's time to watch a movie." So there are no excuses not to cook them.
5. Start with low heat and increase it. And the salt?
For the lentils to turn out well, we must cover them in the pot with cold water and heat them over high heat. You have to keep it high until the first bubbles appear (in about 2 or 3 minutes), and then lower it to half. Abraham explains that cooking initially over high heat and then lowering it is very important to prevent the lentils from peeling, “a legume with a clear tendency to undress.”
You have to control the heat so that the cooking is slow and gentle. Salt must be added in moderate quantities and at the end of cooking “so that it does not influence the process,” according to The Kitchen of Legumes (Planeta Gastro) of the Fundació Alícia. “If it has sausage, control the salt even more so as not to overdo it,” points out the Viridiana chef for whom flavor and pleasure are the same thing.
6. Sauté, chorizo or vegetables?
Lentils allow for multiple preparations: each area has its tradition and each cook has his secret. Creamy, with chorizo, jardinera, Rioja style, chicken, Burgos style (with flour sauce and grated tomato)... Making a sauce is traditional for lentil stew, but Abraham García prefers to avoid them and opt for combining the lentils with chorizo, blood sausage, bacon or ham bones, which are introduced at the beginning of cooking. Also with vegetables, great allies. “I like to cook them with a peeled carrot, leek or garlic cloves, then take them out, crush them and add them again so that everything is well combined,” says the cook.
He also warns us not to overdo sautéing with paprika if we want to add chorizo to the lentils. The steps that Arguiñano (En familia con Karlos Arguiñano, Planeta) follows for his lentils with chistorra are: sauté vegetables in a saucepan with oil, add the lentils and cook everything for 35 minutes over medium heat with the lid on. He separately sautés garlic, cuts the chistorra into pieces and grills it and adds both elements to the cooked lentils before serving.
7. Underestimate the advantages of cooking in a pressure cooker
With the pressure cooker it is not necessary to put as much water as in the conventional pot. From 1.5 to 2 liters per 500 grams of raw lentils because cooking is much faster: 10 to 20 minutes, they point out in the Fundació Alícia book. Therefore this is also a more economical and efficient method that should not be underestimated.
Thanks to the fact that it reaches a temperature of about 120º C, the pressure cooker can reduce the cooking time of legumes by half or less. For example, Karlos Arguiñano prepares them with carrots, onion, garlic cloves and chorizo, which he places in the slow cooker with ¾ liters of water and a pinch of salt and cooks for 8 minutes, as explained in The joy of cooking (Planeta ).
8. Overlook the importance of vitamin C to assimilate the iron from lentils
Lentils are one of the main sources of plant-based iron: one serving provides more than twice as much iron as a 125-gram beef steak. But be careful because iron from animal origin is absorbed more easily than that from vegetables, which requires the presence of vitamin C. Therefore, it is essential that with the same meal we eat some food that contains it, such as oranges, peppers, spinach or tomatoes.
On the other hand, since the protein in lentils has low biological value, if we want to compare it to what we get from eating a steak, we will have to combine these legumes with cereals, seeds or nuts. That is why popular wisdom combines lentils with rice in many dishes. “It is not necessary that there be the same amount of rice and lentils or that they be on the same plate,” it is noted in The Kitchen of Legumes.
9. Not eating for fear of flatulence
Legumes are flatulent. Although lentils cause less gas than others such as beans or chickpeas, if this is a problem for you, the Alícia Foundation recommends some tricks. For example, soak the legumes so that some of the substances that are not digested well in the intestine are diluted in that water (preferably with baking soda or ginger), which we will not use. We can also help eliminate these discomforts by throwing away the water where they have been cooked, taking sprouts or enzymes, adding aromatic spices to the casserole and also getting the body used to legumes, eating them more often. Abraham García does not consider it common for lentils to cause flatulence, although, if it does occur, “the pleasure of taking them and their nutrients more than compensate for that small discomfort,” he points out.
10. Not putting imagination into the dishes
Abraham García, a chef originally from Toledo but in love with Mexico, the Maghreb and the Far East, advises putting imagination into preparations with lentils, going beyond the appetizing chistorra or blood sausage. At Viridiana, for example, he makes some sought-after mestizo curried lentils that he cooks in a traditional and complete way with coconut milk, lemon grass and a red curry, “which he sensed would work very well.”
Nor should we forget the appetizing lentil salads, like the one Joan Roca makes in her book Cooking with Joan Roca at Low Temperature (Planeta) with confit squid and julienne-cut spring onion soaked in pomegranate vinegar.
Another idea: the Torres brothers in Torres in the kitchen make them in an airtight jar in a bain-marie, “a method that, in addition to being clean, produces a tastier stew with more concentrated flavors.” And if you want to celebrate Italian New Year's Eve you can copy the in-laws of the sommelier Meritxell Falgueras (married to the Tuscan winemaker, Lorenzo Zonin) and make some sautéed lentils with onion and carrot, add wine, vegetable broth and cook them for an hour . In Italy, lentils are accompanied by a meat sausage called cotechino or zampone (shaped like a pig's leg). And hope they bring luck.
