How to cook lentils

Most beans are prepared long enough,so many people think that you need to cook lentils just like, say, peas or beans. As a result, they brew it for more than an hour, before that, and soaked for a couple of hours for fidelity, and then are surprised that the lentils are boiled. How to cook lentils correctly?

Lentil cooking time Less than other legumes, and depends on its variety. The longest is boiling French green lentils: this is the most resistant to boiling variety. Therefore, it can be used, for example, for salads, in which lentils must keep their shape. And two other varieties - brown and red Egyptian - are boiled faster and are better to boil.

Wherein brown lentils - this is sort of a "transitional" variety, depending ontime of cooking, it can both keep the shape, and turn into a puree. Therefore, the cooking time of brown lentils will depend on what kind of dish of lentils you are going to prepare: for a salad it will need to be cooked less, for soup-mashed potatoes - longer. A red lentils it boils quickly, so it is suitable only for soups and purees.

Soak lentils before cooking does not need: it is already perfectly welded. But before you prepare lentils, you must wash it and go over it, removing the debris, if it is present. Rinse the lentils with cold water, using a strainer or colander with small holes: the lentil kernels are rather small, and through large holes they will slip. It is advisable to wash lentils in several waters.

To lentils not digested, it is better to put it not in cold water, but in boiling. On average, one glass of lentil is requiredone and a half to two glasses of water. Bring the water to a boil, put the lentils into it, reduce the heat to a minimum and cook the lentils 15-45 minutes (depending on the grade and the required degree of readiness). From time to time, mix the contents of the pan, tasting the lentils to taste, this will help not to digest it.

Note that salt slows down cooking, so salt lentils need at the very end of cooking, somewhere for 5-7 minutes before the end of cooking. The same, by the way, applies to acids. Therefore, say, if you add fresh tomatoes to lentil soup, it will be cooked longer than without them, because tomato fruits contain apple and citric acid.

You can cook lentils with spices, so shewill be much tastier. You can add cloves, sage, rosemary, bay leaves, celery, onions, garlic or other spices to your taste when cooking. A so that the seeds of lentils after cooking were more tender and velvety, you can add olive oil to the water (about half a tablespoon).

If you cook lentil soup, then the first in the boiling broth is put lentils, and then other products. But if you decide to cook lentils with meat, first the meat is brought almost to the full preparedness, and only then lentils are added to the dish. For second courses and side dishes lentil cook until soft, not allowing it to boil, and then extinguish or bake with the rest of the ingredients until ready. AT salads Use green lentils, boiling it until it is ready, and then mixing with the rest of the ingredients.

Cooking lentils is even easier than many other legumes. The main thing is to know the basic nuances of cooking, about which we told you in this article: what distinguishes the green, brown and red lentils, how many varieties are brewed, for which dishes it is better to use different sorts.