Very Versatile Lentil Soup
I have achieved new heights in vegetarian laziness. Canned beans are already my go to food. Just rinse and eat. So convenient. I'm not gonna sit there cooking dry beans for hours. That's just madness. To hell with BPAs. Been eating them all this time.
Still, normally I will cook lentils. They only take a mere 20 minutes to cook. And dry beans are less expensive. So lentils are definitely worth buying dry and cooking. They're especially nice cooked in broth or in with a rice mix that requires roughly the same cooking time. I quite like lentils cooked with yellow saffron rice mix.
But during the winter soup can be really super cheap. Progresso brand sells two vegetarian lentil soups which are very good. They're basically just a big pile of lentils in a little bit of tasty broth. One's more spinachy and one's more tomatoey. Both are good, if you don't mind the sodium content.
I'm sure there are other great lentil soups one might choose. But this the only brand with which I have any experience. Whichever soup you choose, in order for it to work in the ways described here it needs to be at least 85-90% lentils and only 15-10% broth.
So I've actually been using the lentil soup in pretty much the same way I would regular canned beans. Just open and use. I tried a sandwich with them. Normally I'll lube my sandwiches with hummus and then add rinsed canned beans. But when I ran out of hummus I decided to try the lentil soup as the sandwich base instead.
Don't heat it up. Just use it straight from the room temp can.
It worked out very nicely. I just had to be mindful not to use too much of the broth when adding the lentils to the bread. Built my sandwich as usual in every other way. A little hot sauce, some cheese, some lettuce. Yum!
What it's really great for is salad. Instead of using salad dressing and rinsed canned beans I just used the wet lentils and a few spoonfuls of the broth they came in. It makes a pretty awesome salad topping. Lubes everything up rather nicely. I still add some vinegar or hot sauce, but much less.
It also plays really well with nutritional yeast. The lentil broth and the yeast work really well together to create nice flavors. So bonus there.
Give it a try for yourself. See if you don't love both the convenience and the taste.
Still, normally I will cook lentils. They only take a mere 20 minutes to cook. And dry beans are less expensive. So lentils are definitely worth buying dry and cooking. They're especially nice cooked in broth or in with a rice mix that requires roughly the same cooking time. I quite like lentils cooked with yellow saffron rice mix.
But during the winter soup can be really super cheap. Progresso brand sells two vegetarian lentil soups which are very good. They're basically just a big pile of lentils in a little bit of tasty broth. One's more spinachy and one's more tomatoey. Both are good, if you don't mind the sodium content.
I'm sure there are other great lentil soups one might choose. But this the only brand with which I have any experience. Whichever soup you choose, in order for it to work in the ways described here it needs to be at least 85-90% lentils and only 15-10% broth.
So I've actually been using the lentil soup in pretty much the same way I would regular canned beans. Just open and use. I tried a sandwich with them. Normally I'll lube my sandwiches with hummus and then add rinsed canned beans. But when I ran out of hummus I decided to try the lentil soup as the sandwich base instead.
Don't heat it up. Just use it straight from the room temp can.
It worked out very nicely. I just had to be mindful not to use too much of the broth when adding the lentils to the bread. Built my sandwich as usual in every other way. A little hot sauce, some cheese, some lettuce. Yum!
What it's really great for is salad. Instead of using salad dressing and rinsed canned beans I just used the wet lentils and a few spoonfuls of the broth they came in. It makes a pretty awesome salad topping. Lubes everything up rather nicely. I still add some vinegar or hot sauce, but much less.
It also plays really well with nutritional yeast. The lentil broth and the yeast work really well together to create nice flavors. So bonus there.
Give it a try for yourself. See if you don't love both the convenience and the taste.
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