My DD is learning to cook dry beans and lentils. Yay DD!. She refuses to use recipes, generally, and especially refused to see my reasoning that any old recipe off the internet needs to be vetted against your cooking experience -- so stick to tried and true sources the first time.
Anyway, she wanted to cook lentils. I told her it was easy, the easiest dried legume infact -- you just boil them for about 20 minutes, like rice.
She insisted that they needed to be soaked first, because last time it did not work for her. So she soaked them overnight and did not cook them for 2 more days (soaking on the counter all this time.)
Unknown to me, she had mixed together brown lentils and yellow chana. To her credit, some on-line random sources called the yellow chana "lentils" when translating to English, but they are really more like a hard split yellow pea.
Turns out the yellow chana really need a pressure cooker. Soaking for 2-3 days and then boiling for 2 hours did not soften them, but did a number on the lentils. And that long soak resulted in a slightly sour taste....
Ugh. Uncooked split pea and sour lentil ... something.
Next step? Add it to her beet soup recipe. I love beet soup.Yet... I don't like it with coconut milk and ginger (coconut milk needs a bright flavour like lime or chili, not earthy beets IMO), and it is especially not good with crunchy under cooked split beans, and "have they gone bad?" brown lentils.
