Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

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Slevin
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Re: Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

Post by Slevin »

grundomatic wrote:
Fri Dec 16, 2022 5:37 pm
I learned about lentils from ERE. Once we stopped buying and cooking meat, I replaced the 1lb of ground beef in our favorite taco recipe with 1 cup of lentils, cooked. At some point I realized there was no need to cook the lentils separately, so it became a one-pot meal. Then we wanted to take it to work, so I started adding rice to it so we wouldn't have to futz with tortillas and dripping taco stuff everywhere. It's a staple now, sometimes cooked as often as every other week. Yay lentils!
I've also been doing this idea a bunch lately when I'm "burnt out" of cooking / spending all my energy elsewhere. Fantastic staple.

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Lemur
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Re: Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

Post by Lemur »

I followed something very close to this video that came out real nice: https://youtu.be/qRHAWq_fp1o
I did not have parsnips but used potatoes. I did not have the greens shown in the video so just used italian seasoning instead. Made my own chicken broth from leftover bones from a prior meal. Use slightly less water so its not overly liquidity if you're trying to go for a more creamier texture.

Crusader
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Re: Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

Post by Crusader »

How do you deal with the extra gas that your stomach produces as a result of eating a lot of lentils and beans? I don't care about farting if I am alone, but often I am not. If you are living with a partner, do you just not care after a while?

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Re: Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

Post by AxelHeyst »

There are a number of tricks wrt reducing the gas load of beans such as presoaking, sometimes with additives like baking soda (iirc), and ensuring that the beans are thoroughly cooked.

Part of it is just getting your body used to them, in my experience. If you go from eating very few beans to having a cup a day, you're gonna have a bad time. Ramp up easefully, though, or just whiteknuckle, and the symptoms subside over time. ime.

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Slevin
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Re: Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

Post by Slevin »

Crusader wrote:
Wed Apr 12, 2023 12:51 pm
How do you deal with the extra gas that your stomach produces as a result of eating a lot of lentils and beans? I don't care about farting if I am alone, but often I am not. If you are living with a partner, do you just not care after a while?
Assume right now you have a particular blend of gut flora. Your current particular blend is quite inefficient at processing lentils and beans (and probably just fiber in general), because you don't eat them very often. The more often you eat beans, the higher the concentration of efficient (no gas) bean digesting gut flora will get, the better you will also get at digesting fiber in general, and the more healthy you and your gut will get.

Now if you want to eat beans and lentils for "every meal every day" (please actually aim for variety here), you need to increase the count of Efficient Bean Digesters (EBD), while causing yourself the least pain in the process. Me, I just didn't care, and ate tons of beans and lentils starting from when i became plant based. This caused some excessive bloating, gas, and discomfort in the early days, but now its basically near zero (unless I introduce some weird novel new type of bean, which then re-adjusts the flora). But the real game is to slowly ramp up the bean and lentil consumption to ramp up the EBD population while causing you the least gastrointestinal discomfort and musical accompaniment.

I can't give you any silver bullets on how to do this process exactly, but I would probably do something like measure the weight of the beans in the meal, start from a lower amount, then note down level of GI discomfort, and use that as a basic feedback loop. Then as my body adjusts, I would slowly ramp up the bean consumption to match what I can handle with milder symptoms.

Also, humans make music with their butts. Its only weird if you make it weird, and because its already culturally defined as weird. Make it a silly game / joke with your partner and / or do a really bad job at covering it up in a funny way, and it will all go much better during the adjustment period and after.

Crusader
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Re: Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

Post by Crusader »

Ok, it's good to know that the gas issue gets better over time. It's not terrible right now so I'll just keep at it. In terms of variety, well, the meal I am currently having is:

wholewheat pasta or brown rice
onions
red lentils
frozen vegetables (carrots and green peas)
some kind of sauce (either salsa or Bolognese or hummus)
some spices (tabasco, curry powder, BBQ seasoning)
a bit of olive oil (a tablespoon, or less if I am using hummus)

I guess I can buy green lentils instead of red, and also use beans (I have pinto in my storage, but there are other types). I just haven't been cooking beans yet because it takes way longer to make.

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Slevin
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Re: Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

Post by Slevin »

Crusader wrote:
Thu Apr 13, 2023 11:01 am
Ok, it's good to know that the gas issue gets better over time. It's not terrible right now so I'll just keep at it. In terms of variety, well, the meal I am currently having is:

I guess I can buy green lentils instead of red, and also use beans (I have pinto in my storage, but there are other types). I just haven't been cooking beans yet because it takes way longer to make.
Yeah if we are talking about dried beans, I pretty much ALWAYS pressure cook them. It cuts down cooking time and effort drastically, but its still about 90 mins to get the beans cooked from dry (if not soaked at all, this is <10 mins effort, maybe up to 15 with seasoning and sauteing onion/garlic to add to them before cooking). I usually do ~6 cups dry at a time (roughly 2lbs or 1ish kg). Lentils are about 15ish mins for everything, so yeah, very different scale.

guitarplayer
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Re: Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

Post by guitarplayer »

I had a chat with DW about it a moment ago. We did a natural experiment.

We have been vegans the past almost two years. Gradually transitioning to whole food plant based, unprocessed, simple food. Lots of legumes, the past half a year we ate something like 200g dry legumes per day per person. We cook them with a slow cooker, soak for min 12h beforehand, the first water is with a pinch of soda bicarbonate. Cook in slowcooker overnight.

The past four weeks we have been having a diet much much closer to SAD than the above. Still vegetarian and leaning vegan, but much more processed, added salt sugar and fat everywhere, this type of thing. Went through it, but not feeling very good, a shallow sort of spike pleasure and otherwise more tired than usual.

In relation to your question @Crusader, DW noted more gases in those four weeks than on our usual 200g dry legumes/person/day diet.

Human body is like a microcosm, more than half of the weight you see on bathroom scales is other organisms. Once you build the gut flora that deals with legumes you will be getting from it short fatty acids as a bonus, virtuous circle.

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Re: Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

Post by jacob »

guitarplayer wrote:
Thu Apr 13, 2023 1:03 pm
Human body is like a microcosm, more than half of the weight you see on bathroom scales is other organisms.
I should hope not. While non-human [mostly gut] bacteria number about the same as human cells in the body, it's only a few percent out the total weight.

guitarplayer
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Re: Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

Post by guitarplayer »

Am going to try to find the source of this info, there is one friend I am going to ask if I don't find it.

For now I have this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-43674270 but maybe I fell victim of pop-science - or maybe it's by the cell count, rather. A pity, the bathroom scales visualisation would stick in mind better.

Alternatively, there's this theory of a confederation of various organisms at some point having a referendum to merge into a super organism that then evolved to what now is human.

sky
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Re: Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

Post by sky »

Lentil Spaghetti Sauce

In a pressure cooker:

Chop and simmer in a small amount of oil until soft:
1 onion
3 cloves garlic
1 leek
8 oz mushrooms
3 leaves cabbage

Add:
1 can diced tomatoes (14 oz)
1 can Tomato Sauce (14 oz)
A few Tbs of water to clean out cans of tomato
1 Tbs Italian Seasoning
1 Tbs beef broth powder (or bullion)
1 Tbs nutritional yeast
1 Tbs Maggi (or worcestershire, or soy sauce)
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 cup dry lentils
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Cook under pressure 15 minutes.
Salt to taste.

Makes 4 servings.

I had this for dinner tonight, it was very good. This is mildly spiced, if you prefer more flavor the spices could probably be doubled.

loutfard
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Re: Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

Post by loutfard »

Crusader wrote:
Wed Apr 12, 2023 12:51 pm
How do you deal with the extra gas that your stomach produces as a result of eating a lot of lentils and beans? I don't care about farting if I am alone, but often I am not. If you are living with a partner, do you just not care after a while?
Best case, farts becomes a reason for joy. Laughter at particularly smelly, loud or long farts or impressive sequences of them is not uncommon in our household.

Here's an obligatory film reference. Louis de Funès, the absolute monument of the French cinema screen, in one of his last films before his premature death: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqAYnYHEp-Q .

There is a long tradition of spectacular farters. Some even made their living out of it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_P%C3%A9tomane .

Coming back to your question and other participants' suggestions, I have not noticed any significant decrease in gas production since going vegetarian years and years ago. This seems consistent with the limited scientific literature I could be bothered to look up, mainly https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/8/2638 ( doi.org/10.3390/nu13082638 ) .

Crusader
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Re: Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

Post by Crusader »

A little update: my gas was actually coming more from too much onion and beans, not lentils. I don't know if I got accustomed to it, but I don't seem to have too much gas from lentils with a moderate amount of onions. (I love onions) Still experimenting with beans :)

loutfard
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Re: Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

Post by loutfard »

https://somethingnutritiousblog.com/lentil-burgers/

I first wrote about these in my journal before realising this is a better spot. Tasty, cheap, healthy. easy to take on the road. First ate them at a friend's place two weeks ago, and the've already become a staple food in our household.

Try them!

sky
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Re: Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

Post by sky »

Thank you to @ffj for sending me dried mushrooms. I made a Mushroom Lentil soup using dried mushrooms and found that adding about 3 parts water to 1 part shredded dried mushrooms by volume seems to be about right. For example in the recipe below for 1/2 cup dried mushrooms, I added 1-1/2 cups water. This is the same ratio I use for lentils.

Mushroom Lentil Soup
In a 4 quart pressure cooker:
1 Tbs Olive Oil
1 medium onion, chopped
6 cloves garlic, chopped
Simmer until soft

12 oz frozen broccoli and cauliflower
14 oz canned diced tomatos
8 oz tomato sauce
3 cups water
1/2 cup shredded dried mushrooms (in food processor)
1/2 cup lentils
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
4 Tbs dried leek flakes
1 Tbs chili powder
1 Tbs cumin
1 Tbs herbes de provence
1 Tbs chicken broth powder
1 tsp Maggi (or soy sauce)
Cook 5 minutes under pressure, let cool to pressure release.

Kielbasy
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Re: Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

Post by Kielbasy »

Farters:

Have you tried dal? I think maybe the skins being gone makes the lentils easier on digestion.

guitarplayer
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Re: Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

Post by guitarplayer »

Serendipitous experiment:

Last night we cooked beans in the slow cooker as usual, but because of a misunderstanding we never added any water. The beans were pre-soaked which according to my recent experiments means that the ratio of dry beans to water in there was roughly 1:1. I slow cooked them for the typical ~4.5h.

The beans turned out cooked, if hard. Like unroasted peanuts, if you ever had these. I had the first portion about 10h ago, then another one 7h ago. No gastric issues at all.

Very happy with something new in my cooking toolkit.

shaz
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Re: Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

Post by shaz »

I just tried the lentil burger recipe recommended by @loutfard - yum! They will be going in the rotation.

loutfard
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Re: Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

Post by loutfard »

I've come to appreciate mujadarra very much. It's a traditional middle eastern recipe with rice and lentils with a bit of cumin, mint or coriander, fried onion in olive oil. Very cheap and healthy. Relatively fast. Easy to make large quantities. Keeps long in the fridge.

Goes well with a traditional yoghurt sauce. We use dried parsley and garlic paste in that. Super fast to whip up.

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Slevin
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Re: Lentil Appreciation + Recipe Thread

Post by Slevin »

Mujaddara was one of the first recipes I learned to make after college (thanks to the OG ERE blog loving lentils). Fantastic food, but my body wasn't adapted to eating lentils yet, so I ended up only being able to eat small portions of it at a time, which kept it from being in my weekly meal rotation.

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