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Lentils Cookbook

Help with cooking lentils?

I am having, of all things, a problem cooking lentils! They come out hard. I haven’t soaked them because the package and cookbooks I read say you don’t need to. I add them to boiling unsalted water to which I add a sliced onion, turn the heat down to simmer, cover, and let them cook. They never seem to get done. I have let them cook for up to 3 hours! I have tried different types of lentils and there’s no real difference. What am I doing wrong? How can a person fail at cooking lentils?

I have encountered this problem a time or two over the years. It has always been due to old stock. But even then cooking time was never more than about an hour. Probably what is happening is your adding onion has lowered the pH of the cooking water enough to interfere with the cooking. Although onions are not considered an acidic food their pH is about 5 to 5.5 depending on variety. USDA’s demarcation point between high acid and low acid foods is pH 4.6. Dried beans do not cook well in acidic environments. Since you say the water is unsalted you already know that dried beans should never be cooked w/ salt. Lentils should also be boiled for several minutes before the heat is reduced to simmer; two or three minutes is enough. Add your seasonings after the beans are tender!

Note for new comers to cooking dried beans. Tomatoes and wine are often added mistakenly to dried beans before they are cooked. There pH is about 4.5 & 3.5 respectively. In general, adding baking soda to the cooking water for beans is not a good idea because it adds to the “hardness” of the water and can increase cooking time, particularly if you have high mineral content water.

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