Crock pot ideas/Recipie

[mudmucker]

I made lentil soup for dinner in my slow cooker/crockpot today. I followed the vegetarian cookbook recipe almost exactly (I substituted bok choy for the kale strips though, since I had it on hand), and I used some of those pretty little dark green "French lentils" from the health food store.
DH liked it well enough, said it was tasty. In fact it WAS tasty, but....I still don't like lentil soup. Oh well.

I never really cared for lentils too much either, until I started cooking Indian once and a while where to really make it authentic it is recommended to use lentils (dal) grown in India rather than the U.S. What a difference ! The asian lentils are so much sweeter, have more flavor, and are less mealy. I buy toor dal (yellow lentils) at an East West store in the town where I work. There are other dals that I get but these are my favorite. I make a perfumed spiced puree with these to dip flat breads in. The toor dal is so flavorful to me I started using them in my general pea soup recipe with ham bone stock. I'll never go back to the green or black western lentils again.

I use the crock pot alot too, mostly in the winter. I had a bad health scare about 10 years ago so now I try to remove as many artificial ingredients as possible from my food. That means preparing most things from scratch, including breads, rolls, soups, desserts etc. It really doesn't always have to take up alot of time. As for beans, I used dried black beans and cannenelli beans, provided I remember to soak them. But I have a pressure cooker for those times I simply can't wait to soak beans overnight and then cook them. You can get beans ready in 40 minutes that way. And of course though, you don't have to soak lentils.

[OakLeaf]

Does it really make a difference where they're grown? I've bought channa and rajma (chickpeas and kidney beans) from the Indian grocery before and they didn't taste any different from what I'm used to. Indian-grown rajma are maybe a little smaller than American kidney beans, but I didn't notice a flavor difference.

Of course there are lots of varieties of beans that are traditional in Indian but not European, East Asian or American cooking, and vice versa - but I know there's US-grown moong and masoor dal anyhow. Those two are probably my favorite for puree-style dals and Indian soups.

Do you use the oily or dry toover dal?

[mudmucker]

Of legumes and flavor differences let me refine - I was speaking mostly of a kind of lentil I like and meant to emphasize that. I re-read it and it does sound like a general collective statement that all asian lentils seem to taste better.

That said, I do find that toor dal is much more flavorful and has a little bit more of a silkier texture than that of the green or brown lentils of the west. I was actually surprised at the difference when I discovered them. For me I find that these particular yellow split lentils are very different and I find I like them much better as far as lentils go. I buy the dry kind vs. oily.

But you do bring up a good distinction. I also use mung dal and urad dal and I don't find that much of a difference. Of the other legumes like the chickpeas or kidney beans I don't find that much of a difference either, but I don't mind the flavor or texture of what you can find U.S. grown so I'll just get the dried version of those.