How to cook lentils

• 2 cupsdried lentils · brown, green, Puy or beluga, picked over and rinsed
• 6 cupswater or unsalted stock · enough to cover by two inches, topped up if it drops
• 1 1/2 tspkosher salt · in the water from the start, despite what you have read
• 1 wholeonion · halved, skin on, fished out at the end
• 4 clovesgarlic · smashed, skin on
• 2 wholebay leaves
• 4 sprigsthyme · or a small rosemary sprig, tied with the bay if you want it easy to remove
• 1 stripkombu · about 4 inches, optional, it adds glutamate and may ease digestion
• 2 tbspextra-virgin olive oil · stirred in at the end, off the heat
• 2 tbspred wine vinegar or lemon juice · added only after the lentils are tender
• 1/2 tspblack pepper · freshly ground

Method

1. 1

   Know which lentil you bought, because the times are not close

   Brown lentils, the cheap supermarket default, take twenty to twenty-five minutes and start breaking down at thirty. Green lentils run twenty-five to thirty and hold slightly better. French Puy and Italian black beluga are smaller, denser and thicker-skinned, and stay intact for thirty-five to forty minutes, which is why they are the ones for salads. Split red and yellow lentils collapse into a puree in fifteen to twenty and are not supposed to hold their shape at all.

2. 2

   Pick them over, then rinse, and do the picking first

   Tip the lentils onto a rimmed sheet and spread them into a single layer with your hand. You are looking for small stones, clods of dirt and the occasional shrivelled lentil, all of which are ordinary in a bag of a legume harvested from the ground. It takes forty seconds and it saves a tooth. Then rinse in a sieve under cold water until the water runs clear. Rinsing after picking, not before, because wet lentils stick to the tray.

3. 3

   Do not soak them, with one exception

   Lentils are small and thin-skinned and cook through in under forty minutes dry, so soaking gains you very little and costs you texture, because soaked lentils turn to mush at the edges before the centres are done. The exception is age. A bag that has been in the cupboard for two years has dried out and hardened and may never soften properly at all, and a one-hour soak helps. If your lentils are still hard after fifty minutes, they are old, not undercooked.

4. 4

   Salt the water, and here is where the myth came from

   The old rule says salt toughens legume skins and must be added at the end. Side-by-side testing does not support it for lentils, and salted lentils actually hold their shape slightly better while tasting seasoned all the way through rather than seasoned on the surface. What genuinely does toughen skins and stall cooking is acid, which is why tomatoes, vinegar and lemon must wait until the lentils are already tender. Salt at the start, acid at the end.

5. 5

   Aromatics in the pot cost nothing and change the result

   Half an onion skin on, four smashed garlic cloves, two bay leaves and a few thyme sprigs, all fished out before serving. Lentils cooked in plain water taste of plain water, and this is a thirty-second job that gives you seasoned lentils rather than a component you have to rescue later. A four-inch strip of kombu adds glutamate and, in traditional practice and some laboratory work, may soften the oligosaccharides that cause the bloating people associate with legumes.

6. 6

   A bare simmer, never a rolling boil

   Bring the pot up to a boil, then drop it immediately to the lowest heat that keeps a few bubbles breaking the surface. A rolling boil knocks the lentils against each other and the pot walls, which splits skins and turns the top third of the batch into cloudy sludge while the bottom is still firm. This is the same principle as poaching an egg or simmering a stock. Lid off or ajar, so you can see what the surface is doing.

7. 7

   Cover by two inches and top up with hot water

   Lentils absorb roughly two and a half times their volume, so start with three times the water and check at the twenty-minute mark. If the level has dropped below the lentils, add hot water rather than cold, because cold water drops the pot temperature and stalls cooking unevenly. Do not treat this as an absorption method like rice. You are boiling in excess liquid and draining, which gives you far more control over the finished texture.

8. 8

   Start tasting five minutes before you think you should

   A lentil goes from firm to perfect to blown out in about four minutes, and the window is narrower than for any bean. Start eating one every two minutes from the twenty-minute mark for brown lentils and the thirty-minute mark for Puy. Done means tender all the way through with the skin still intact and a very slight resistance at the centre. If the skins are floating loose in the water, you are past it. Different bags of the same variety vary by five minutes.

9. 9

   Drain, then dress while they are hot

   Drain immediately, because lentils left sitting in their hot cooking water keep cooking and will be mush by the time you eat. Pull the aromatics out, tip the lentils into a bowl, and add the olive oil, vinegar and black pepper while they are still steaming. Warm legumes absorb dressing in a way cold ones simply do not, and this single habit is the difference between a lentil salad that tastes of dressing and one that tastes of dressing sitting on top of lentils.

10. 10

    Red lentils are a different job with a different goal

    Split red and yellow lentils have had the skin removed, so they cannot hold a shape and are not trying to. Fifteen to twenty minutes in one part lentils to three parts liquid, stirred occasionally, and they break down into a thick golden puree that is the base of dal and of most lentil soups. They need no draining, they take spices bloomed in fat extremely well, and they will catch on the bottom of the pot if you walk away, unlike the whole varieties.

11. 11

    The pressure cooker and the batch-cook plan

    In an Instant Pot, brown and green lentils take eight minutes at high pressure with a ten-minute natural release, and Puy takes ten. Water at two to one rather than three to one, since nothing evaporates. It is faster and it is also less controllable, because you cannot taste at minute twenty-two. For meal prep, cook two cups dry on a Sunday, which gives about five cups cooked, dress half and leave half plain, and keep both refrigerated for five days.

12. 12

    What a cup of them actually delivers

    One cup of cooked lentils is around 230 calories with 18g of protein and 16g of fiber, which is over half a day's fiber target in a single portion and more protein than two eggs. That fiber is largely soluble, which is the fraction associated with lower LDL cholesterol in the trial literature. It is also why a sudden jump from no legumes to a cup a day produces gas: ramp over two weeks, drink water, and the adaptation is real and fairly quick.

13. 13

    Storage, freezing and the five-day rule

    Cooked lentils keep five days refrigerated in a sealed container, and undressed ones keep better than dressed ones because the acid slowly softens them further. They freeze well for three months, which beans do not always manage, so portion them flat in bags. Save the cooking liquid if you used stock and aromatics, since it is a light brown broth worth building a soup on. Do not leave the drained lentils at room temperature for more than two hours.