Quote Originally Posted by BleeckerSt_Girl View Post
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.