Lentil Recipes - Lentils - One of Healthiest Foods

Lentil recipesare animportant part of any vegetarian diet

Lentils are widely used in vegetarian cooking for their nutritional value. Lentils are one of the healthiest food ingredients.

Lentils include pulses, beans, dals, legumes. They contain high level of proteins, vitamin B1, dietary fiber, minerals, iron ect. They are rich in protein next to soya. Lentils are recommended for diabetics.

The variety of lentils includes:

English Name - Indian Name

Red lentil - Masoor

Green lentil - Moong bean, or Mung bean or GreenGram

Black lentil - Black Gram, Whole Urad Bean

Chickpea - Bengal Gram, Chana

Pigeon pea, Yellow lentil - Toor, Toovar, Arahar

Kidney bean - Rajma

Cow pea, black eyed pea - Lobia or chowli

Lentils are used whole or split. Whole lentils are more nutririous because of their husks. When the husk - skin is removed from the whole lentil and the lentil is split, the split lentil is refered to as dal or daal in Indian languages. The cooked lentil recipe, either made with whole or split lentil is also called as Dal.

So the Indian Dal which you get in restaurants is made with a variety of whole or split lentil. The dals are refered according to the variety of lentil that is split.

Split black lentil - urad dal, white lentil

Split red lentil - masoor dal

Split green lentil - moong dal, mung dal, green gram dal

Split yellow lentil - toovar dal, toor dal, tur dal, arahar dal

Split chickpeas - chana dal, bengal gram dal

The lentils are used to make a main dish such as Khichadi, to make a side dish such as mung bean curry or to make a snack as fried chickpeas.

The cooking time of lentils is short. The split lentil, that is, dal, cooks still faster. It is combined with rice as it has similar cooking time such as in Khichadi. Cooked lentils become thick so water is used to thin it.