Not all “lentils” are lenticular. Nor will they all cook in the same period of time. Silly thing to say? Well, try going down to your local Asian Market (Hakim’s) and picking up some interesting food. You’ll understand fairly quickly that Urid Dal is not “the same as those other things you got last week (except they’re white).” Why? Well, because “red lentils” are probably a whole different family of plant from the “mung bean” which forms “urid dal.” Should you care? Well … unless you have no adventure left in your soul, you should, because the world has countless varieties of bean and if you look at them and say, “yeah, that’s sorta like this other thing,” you’ll be sadly disappointed (and will have to add a ton of extra water, and stirring, and time to your dish!).
Learning about red lentils was way fun, because they cook down to a tasty paste in no time whatsoever. Learning about white lentils … has meant that our dinner is about an hour late. So much for looking at something in the store and saying that they must be the same because they both say “dal” on them. On the plus side, dinner was still hot when Claire dropped in.
I leave you with the “menu” for Ubiquitous Chip, here in Glasgow. Does it make any sense to you? Congratulations.
Yes, I was surprised the first time I cooked red lentils–I treated them like brown lentils and was shocked to find a pot full of mush!
Aren’t they great, though? We love that they’re so fast – as compared to the silly, brown ones, which take forever (and are probably higher in protein and better for us or something).
Ummm…now I have a headache.
I think “dal” must just mean something like “bean.” Assuming that all beans of the same shape will cook down in the same way, then, has proven not to be true.