Lentil Love

Lentil Love

Wintertime is all about comfort foods. I have been the recipient of some delicious homemade food this past year, and one of the themes that keeps recurring is: pulses! I’ve had Egyptian, Syrian, Kurdish and Indian lentil soups which have all been so cozy and heart warming: even more so because they were eaten with friends. One week during Foodie Friday (a weekly community kitchen run out of Stone Church in uptown Saint John), my friend and her mother came in to teach us an incredible Indian recipe for dal and rice, and everyone was surprised by how tasty such a simple bean and rice dish could be.


Lentils are a pulse, the seed of a legume plant, found in pods just like beans and peas. They are small, round and almost flat like a disk. I want to talk about lentils this week for a few reasons. 


GROWN IN CANADA

Yes, believe it or not, this amazing (and perhaps underrated, in our society) food has been grown steadily in Canada since the late 1960s. They are drought tolerant, easy to harvest, and act as nitrogen-fixers. Nitrogen fixers are natural fertilizers that contribute enormously to soil health. Once in 2017 I was visiting my friend in Kenya, and we had bought red lentils from the grocery store. I looked at the bag when I got back to her apartment, and saw they were from an Indian company but product of Canada! In 2022, Canada produced about 35% of the world’s lentils. So although it originated further east on the globe, it is absolutely a local food. 


CHEAP PROTEIN

Lentils are a great plant-based source of protein and fibre. One local grocery store sells Canadian lentils for $1.40/lb, compared to $10/lb for ground beef. So if you need to cut down your grocery bills, lentils are a great replacement for meat from time to time.  But we can’t survive off of fist-fulls of lentils alone. As you may be aware, a “complete protein” contains all the amino acids your body requires. Lentils do not, so they should be combined with a grain, such as rice, wheat, millet, quinoa, etc. in order to complete that protein.


MULTI-TALENTED

Lentils are so versatile, they can be made into soups, crispy toppings, tofu, flatbread, muffins, burger patties… pretty much anything you can think of. I personally have a gargantuan amount of red lentils in my house at the moment, so I’m going to make it a challenge to use them in a different way every week and post about it to inspire all my would-be lentil lovers out there.


If you have heard or experienced that lentils cause digestive upset, it is recommended that you soak and rinse your lentils until the water is clear before using them. In Indian cooking, a spice (technically a gum resin) called asafoetida or hing is used to increase the digestibility of pulses. And generally, just make sure you don’t undercook lentils.


Good for you, good for the soil, good for your wallet, good for Canada. Sounds pretty great to me. 



Some links if you want to read/cook a little more:

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