Easy vegan lentils
Lentils are one of the most basic food elements in a multitude of countries. From South Asia to Europe, this legumes have shown in many ways how versatile and good for our health are.
Vegan lentils
The recipe that we are sharing today is our favourite preparation for this magnificent ingredient. We were trying to come up with a vegan, healthy, but full of flavour dish…and we think we have made it.Give a go to this simple and quick lentils recipe that, on top of healthy, will be delicious.
Ingredients
- 120 g red lentils (peeled)
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 1 tablespoon turmeric
- water
- 3 tablespoons coconut oil
- 1 tablespoon cumin (preferably whole)
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 medium onion
- 1 big tomato
- 1 tablespoon ground coriander seeds
- 1/2 tablespoon garam masala
- 1/2 tablespoon cayenne powder
- 1 teaspoon fresj ginger (or ground)
- salt to taste
- cilantro leaves for decorating (optional)
Instructions
- In a pot, add the lentils and water until it covers the legumes. Add some salt and turmeric.Then, heat the pot at high level and once it starts boiling, quickly turn the heat down to low. Let them cook for 15-20 min and once they are ready, remove them from the heat and reserve.Whilst the lentils are cooking, we are going to prepare the rest of ingredients.
- In the meantime, we are going to cook the remaining ingredients in a pan.Firstly, add some coconut oil to this pan at medium heat and, once it is hot enough, add the cinnamon and whole cumin. Let it cook until the cumin starts bubbling.If you have used grounded spices instead, leave it for just 2 minutes.
- Once the cumin is ready, we add the onion finely diced and let it cook at medium heat until it becomes translucent.
- After a few minutes, incorporate the garlic and ginger to the pan, everything finely minced.Whilst everything is cooking together, we blend the tomato in a food processor or similar to get a very liquid consistency.
- Once the onion has turned a bit brown, we add the blend tomato to the pan and mix well.Now it’s time to let it reduce.
- Once the tomato has lost quite a lot of water and has acquired a darker colour, we add the ground coriander seeds, as well as garam masala and cayenne.
- Mix very well and further reduce the mixture.Once we achieve a paste-like consistency where the oil is visible, it is time to incorporate the lentils.
- Add the lentils to the pan, mix very well, let it reduce the water of the legumes at low or medium heat, and salt to taste.
- And that’s it! You can decorate the dish with some freshly chopped cilantro leaves.
Notes
– You can use Green lentils (unpeeled) and remember to soak them in water the previous night. When starting to cook, add them to the pot with water, turmeric and salt and keep in mind it will take you longer to cook them and you might need to keep adding water from time to time. In our case it took us 2 hours. Then you can incorporate them to the mixture in the pan.
– In this recipe jalapeño peppers go extraordinarily well. Chop them and incorporate them alongside the minced garlic and ginger in step 4.
Thanks a lot for this recipe guys!!! My family had it last night for dinner and it was so yummy! And vegan and vegetarian as well!
I added a little bit less of cayenne because we are not used to spicy food and it was a great success. I’ll prepare it again very soon
Sounds great, Aero33. It’s fantastic that you adapted the recipe to your taste, and we are really glad that it was a success.