The Lentils & Rice Dish

Today, we're making one of my favorite budget-friendly recipes, crispy Indian lentils with rice. And this recipe is from my new cookbook, Big Vegan Flavor, and I love it so much because not only is it nutritious and inexpensive, but it's also just really flavorful. We're gonna crisp up the lentils in the oven and they're gonna pair so well with these really delicious aromatics and the tangy yogurt sauce is gonna be so good. So let's get started by cooking our lentils. Today, I'm using brown lentils, which you can find at pretty much any grocery store, but you could also use green lentils or French green lentils, so basically use what you have. And you want three quarters cup, which is 150 grams. Brown and green lentils need just 10 to 12 minutes before they get al dente, which is what we're looking for. We don't want them to be soft. They're gonna be cooked through, but they should still have a bite. If you're using French green lentils, those will need about 17 to 20 minutes. While the lentils simmer, we'll go ahead and cook our rice. This is jasmine rice, but any white rice variety works and I'm gonna cook it in my Instant Pot because it is very convenient and hands-off. All right, we've got lentils going, rice going. Now we're gonna get started on our infused oil, which is where all the flavor and fun lives in this recipe. First thing we're gonna do is slice a medium shallot. This one is obviously very chunky, so we'll probably just use part of it. And we're gonna slice it as thinly as we can into rings. We're gonna do the same thing for four garlic cloves. I don't normally peel my ginger, as you might have seen from past videos, but for this application, it will be a little noticeable, so I don't want you to chew down on it. So I'm just gonna take a spoon and peel the ginger. This is why I don't peel ginger normally, because it's kind of annoying. And then we'll thinly slice it into matchsticks. Now for my favorite ingredient, a serrano pepper. But if you can't handle heat, you could just use half of this or half of a jalapeno pepper. It does add a lot of interest and deliciousness, so I try not to omit it entirely. Lentils are probably done by now. Let's give it a check. It's cooked through, but it has a little bit of a bite. You don't want them to be soft. I'm gonna let the lentils hang out in a colander for a bit while I finish the spices. Now this is not a classic Indian dish by any means. I just made it up, but we are gonna use some pretty fundamental Indian spices so you get that Indian flavor. We've got black mustard seeds, coriander seeds, and cumin seeds. I'm gonna roughly crush the spices just to give them a little more oomph. If you don't have a mortar and pestle, you can just stick the spices in a Ziploc bag and roll them with a rolling pin or add them to a spice grinder and just do one or two blitzes. And you don't need to grind these into a powder, just a rough crush is good. Plop in our coriander seeds. All right, this is looking good. What's really fun is that the mustard seeds you'll start to see open up into yellow, which is like what you associate mustard with. This is extra beautiful. Before we start on making our delicious infused oil, I'm just gonna let the lentils dry a bit. They're so pretty. We're gonna broil them later, so I want them to be dry because that will help them crisp up. Get some oil in a medium frying pan. Any neutral oil is fine. This is avocado oil. Use whatever you like. Get our shallots going. And what essentially we're gonna do is we're going to infuse the oil with the flavor of the shallots and the garlic and the ginger, plus the spices. So that oil is gonna be super flavorful and then we'll use it to coat the lentils when we broil them. Plus all of these aromatics will get folded into the lentils at the end. So we're basically getting double duty out of our ingredients. And that's kind of the whole thrust of this book over here. It shows you how to get the most value and the most flavor out of your ingredients. Once you start to see just a little bit of golden brown around the edges, go ahead and add everything else, plus those crushed spices and a half teaspoon of turmeric. Just make everything beautiful. As you can see, we've separated the oil into the bowl. We've got the aromatics in the strainer. We're gonna use both, so don't throw either of these out. Why would you? There's so much deliciousness in here. And I'm just gonna spread the aromatics out on a paper towel. This will help them crisp up more and also absorb any excess oil. Oh, and a little flaky sea salt because it's delicious. And also we wanna bring out even more flavor from all this deliciousness. I've got my broiler in the oven preheating for the crispy lentils. In the meantime, I'm going to make the quickest yogurt sauce. I feel like in the West, when we have yogurt, we usually have it for breakfast with like fruit and granola. But in Indian cooking, we have yogurt with like all kinds of savory meals. The yogurt vat, tub, is just like on the table all the time. And it adds like a cooling element because you've got a lot of spicy food, but it also adds this nice tangy acidity. And that's what it's gonna do here. It's also gonna add a nice creamy texture to the crispy lentils and the soft chewy rice. I like using a creamy coconut yogurt for this, but if you can't find that, any vegan yogurt is fine. Of course, it needs to be plain flavored. There's no space for blueberry yogurt or rhubarb yogurt in an Indian dish. Ground cumin to complement the whole cumin seeds from earlier. Tiny bit of sugar, just a quarter teaspoon. It's not gonna taste sweet though, don't worry. And then just some black pepper and salt to taste. Okay, now time to broil the lentils, which is a really fun thing to do. Just basically makes the lentils crispy, which is just kind of like an unexpected, fun, delightful way to enjoy lentils. Yum. Just spread them out as much as you can so they don't overlap too much. And if you don't have a broiler, by the way, you can just roast them in the oven. I would do 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes, toss, and then maybe another five, 10 minutes. I'm using my broiler at high and I'm using the second shelf underneath so they're not gonna burn because they're not gonna be right underneath the heat source. These will go in the oven for four minutes and then we'll give them a toss. This recipe, as I mentioned, is from my new cookbook, Big Vegan Flavor, and it's got 600 pages of mastering vegan cooking plus 150 recipes. Oh, it's very precious. As I was saying, 150 recipes. And I wrote this cookbook really for anyone who's interested in learning how to make amazing plant-based meals at home, whether you're vegan or not. It officially comes out on September 3rd and I would be so honored and delighted if you pre-ordered a copy. And to say thank you, if you do pre-order, I have created an incredible package of exclusive bonus content. It includes my seven-course Indian-inspired dinner party menu, my ultimate vegan grocery list, my guide to mastering Indian spices, and my guide to vegan entertaining. To grab your copy, you can visit bigveganflavor.com or scan this QR code. And with that, let's go check on our lentils. After four minutes under the broiler, you wanna give the lentils a toss to ensure that they crisp up evenly. While I wait for those lentils, I'm gonna chop a nice handful of cilantro, add some nice, fresh, herby flavor, give it some nice green color. And that is my timer telling me to check on the lentils. Crispy but not like rock hard crunchy is what you're going for. Perfect. Now it's time to assemble. In go our aromatics from earlier. Yum. Cilantro and some lemon juice. Get a nice dollop of rice. Now this part is completely unnecessary and extremely extra, but I wanna do like a nice drizzle of the yogurt sauce. So I'm just gonna put it in a drizzle bottle. This is such a fun way to transform really basic ingredients like lentils and rice. I hope you love the recipe. You can find it in the description box below and be sure to check out Big Vegan Flavor, also linked in the description box. Thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next video. Bye.