Curried Lentils

Some weeks, I have a lot of banter stored up, but not today, so I'll just cut to the chase:

Recipe 5:  Curried Lentils

For this recipe, I turned once again to Budget Bytes.  I had seen the recipe for curried lentils a few weeks ago, and kept it in mind. Last week I picked up a pack of chicken legs on sale, and had too many for one pot of chicken and dumplings, but too few for two meals with chicken as the main protien. Lentils + chicken seemed like the perfect solution.

I was happy to have an excuse to try the recipe, because we are a lentil eating family. Generally, I'll throw a bag of lentils in the crock pot with some carrots, onions, a bay leaf or oregano, and some broth or bullion. Top that with two pieces of bacon, and you've got a hearty, nutritious
(if somewhat unappealing looking) soup. We are moving out of winter, though, and soon earthy flavors will seem a bit heavy. So another use for lentils was very welcome.The dish went together pretty easily. Often, I find that my cooking times are longer than the recipe calls for, which I think is because I'm still getting used to cooking on stainless steel, so I use lower heat than I really should. In addition to cooking the vegitables longer, I had to boil the lentils maybe 10 minutes longer than recommended, and they were still a bit unevenly cooked. Next time, I might try using a bigger pot or keeping the temperature up a bit (I turned it down to three). I could just be overcooking my lentils when I do them in the crock pot, of course, so maybe they are supposed to retain a bit of resistance.

The flavor was very nice. Two tablespoons of curry powder is quite a bit, so each bite had a nice slow burn. Our son didn't have much that day, but did have some when I ate the leftovers cold as a snack (of course, that may have had more to do with needing to mooch on Mom's food than actually enjoying the flavor).

To me, the one flaw was the amount of tomato sauce. It ended up feeling a bit thick, and I thought the tomato flavor was a little overwhelming. Because the recipe calls for one can of sauce, the next time I make it, I might try doubling all of the other ingredients, and maybe save a little of the liquid the lentils cooked in to thin it a bit.

Overall, though, it was a nice dish that I think will make it into the regular rotation of recipes to make when meat is expensive.