Lentils Make the Best Minced Meat
It took me a few extra laps along the path of adulthood to find my culinary gene. My life used to be spent convincing those closest to me that the bowls of cereal I threw in or the scrambled eggs I scrambled were enough for cooking. For everything else there was takeaway or my wife.
Even typing these words, I feel like a terrible jerk. I never intended to be one of those hopelessly incompetent CBS sitcom husbands who wait for dinner from the comfort of the couch. Sure, I did the dishes, but cooking someone’s food is arguably one of the most complete expressions of love in life. And if there’s one thing I share with the goofy sitcom husband, it’s that I got married. Suffice it to say that I needed to start working with pots and pans.
The awakening came when I was in my early 30s, triggered by a deep dive into my Ashkenazi Jewish heritage , which first activated my culinary genes, turning me into a frying pan madman. I soon found myself constantly experimenting with new recipes and even creating my own .
Getting used to food in practice is one of the many factors that prompted me to reconsider my relationship with meat. Our kitchen quickly ceased to contain meat, and since then, none of us has skipped cooking meat. We discovered how versatile and delicious vegetables, especially legumes, can be when treated with the same love, care and seasoning as meat. Lentils, in all their savory glory, have become our favorite substitute for minced meat.
Lentils: the vegan kid’s new best friend
In our family, we cook Greek bolognese and pastizio, a baked pasta dish with tubular bucatini noodles, minced meat and béchamel sauce. These are important dishes for my wife’s Greek-American family, where Aunt Tula from My Big Big Greek Wedding is regularly quoted. You don’t eat meat!? Everything is fine. I’ll cook lamb for you.
A permanent ban on pasticio is not an option. At the same time, this is not the kind of dish where you can just throw meat. You need a replacement – and it doesn’t have to be some elaborate concoction trying to mimic meat. Lentils will more than do the job.
Whether you’re a young vegetarian or just trying to cut down on meat, lentils will be your new best friend. Sure, they can stand out in many dishes on their own – damn lentil soup comes to mind – but they also work as a delicious substitute for the minced meat we find in traditional pastizio.
We learned this technique in the vegetarian moussaka class. Moussaka is similar to pasticio in that it is a layered dish, usually eggplant and/or potatoes with minced meat. Our instructor, a Greek Albanian named Clara, showed us how to replace the meat with a savory portion of boiled lentils.
How to use lentils instead of minced meat
The technique is simple: handle lentils with the same care you would with minced meat. Sauté them in your chosen vegetable oil for a few minutes over medium heat (usually extra virgin olive oil for us), season with spices, and add two cups of liquid for every cup of lentils (vegetable broth is ideal). Bring the pot to a boil before simmering, with the pan or pan almost completely covered.
After about 10 minutes, check the consistency of the lentils. If you are going to add them to a regular meat dish where they will be baked in the oven, such as pasticio, you should stop cooking them a few minutes before al dente. Otherwise, you risk turning them into a mess. If you’re making bolognese sauce, remove it from the heat once you’re happy with the taste of the lentils.
Greek cuisine may have inspired us to use lentils, but they can be used across the entire culinary and cultural spectrum. (Although we have a veggie pastizio recipe you might want to start with, it consists of a layer of lentils seasoned with cinnamon, nutmeg, and oregano.)
Put lentils in stuffed tomatoes, peppers, spicy roast, shepherd’s pie, lasagna – the possibilities are endless.