Soaking Lentils (recipe + video)

Soaking lentils play a critical part in my traditional cooking repertoire. Low in phytic acid and other anti-nutrients, lentils require only a quick soak before they are ready to cook – unlike beans. If you sometimes have trouble digesting beans like I do, even when properly soaked and cooked, lentils are a wonderful alternative.

There are 3 types of lentils:  green, brown, and red. I typically use green lentils as they hold their shape very well after cooking, but I have recently found the red lentil to be simply delightful in soups.

When combined in a dish with homemade stock as shown in this week’s video, lentils make an economical, nutritious alternative to meat.   The gallon of lentil soup I make in this video only costs about $5 – and I used organic vegetables and organic lentils!  This is about 25 cents a serving!

Even the cheapest fast food can’t beat that!

In tough economic times, incorporating lots of lentils into your meals is a smart way to keep the food budget in check without sacrificing anything in nutrition!

Incidentally, Dr. Weston A. Price considered lentils to be the most nutritious of all legumes as they are loaded with potassium,, calcium, zinc, iron, and B vitamins.   I first learned this at the 2007 Wise Traditions Conference during Sally Fallon Morell’s talk on “Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner’.   The soup recipe I show you how to make in this video is an adaptation of the lentil soup recipe Sally discussed during that seminar.

I hope you enjoy it as much as my family has over the past few years!

Why Bother Soaking Lentils?

As discussed in the video above, soaking lentils prior to cooking significantly enhances the nutritional value of these tasty legumes. It is a process similar to soaking nuts.

In fact, healthy traditional cultures took great care to soak seeds of all kinds before eating.

Lentils are seeds too!

Soaking virtually eliminates hard to digest lectins, which can cause discomfort and encourage weight gain in some people.

If time is a concern, you can soak large batches of lentils, rinse/low temperature dry and then freeze. This way, when you want to make a recipe using lentils, you can just grab some out of the freezer and cook immediately rather than have to wait several hours or overnight to soak some first.

If you wish to save even more time, you can skip the step requiring soaking lentils and use sprouted lentils instead. I have actually switched over to using sprouted lentils most of the time now that quality organic ones are available at the health food store.

You can use either organic sprouted green lentils or the sprouted lentils trio (black, red, and green lentils). The trio is my favorite.

Be sure to never use the water from soaked beans, lentils, or any other legume for cooking. This modern practice, known as aquafaba, is not traditional. Worse, it is risky to your digestive health.

Recipes Using Soaked Lentils

Once you have a pot of soaked lentils ready, try using them as a base for this curried lentil soup.

Another recipe to try using soaked lentils is German lentil soup.

Reference

Nourishing Traditions Cookbook