Soaking Lentils Before Cooking — for Best Taste and Nutrition

Summary

In this video, Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist®, shares how to make curried lentil soup, emphasizing the importance of soaking lentils to enhance taste and nutrition. She explains the process of using water and apple cider vinegar to break down antinutrients in lentils, making them easier to digest. Sarah guides viewers through the soup-making process, from caramelizing onions and carrots in butter and olive oil to simmering the soup with chicken and turkey stock. She shares insights on using the right type of stock, adding curry paste for flavor, and ensuring the perfect seasoning with fresh lemon juice, sea salt, and peppercorns. The cooking techniques blend modern convenience with traditional methods, providing a warm, comforting dish perfect for cold evenings.

Highlights

• Sarah introduces curried lentil soup and emphasizes traditional soaking techniques for lentils. 🥣
• Soaking involves adding filtered water and apple cider vinegar to neutralize antinutrients. 🥛
• Flexibility is key; if dinner plans change, soak lentils can be refrigerated and used later. 🌡️
• Chopping onions and carrots first reduces prep time and helps manage strong flavors. 🔪
• Simmering carrots and onions in butter and oil lays a flavorful base for the lentil soup. 🧈
• Adding chicken and turkey stock, alongside soaked lentils, allows for a rich, nutritious broth. 🍜
• Flavor enhancement with green curry paste and seasoning with lemon juice, sea salt, and peppercorns. 🌶️
• The handheld blender makes pureeing the soup easy, emphasizing the blend of traditional and modern cooking techniques. 🌀

Key Takeaways

• Soaking lentils is essential for reducing antinutrients, enhancing digestion and unlocking nutrition. 🌿
• Filtered water and acidic mediums like raw apple cider vinegar aid in breaking down lentil antinutrients. 💧
• Cooking is flexible; soaking lentils can be paused by refrigerating them until you're ready to cook. 🔄
• Prepare onions and carrots ahead to expedite the soup-making process, especially when dealing with strong organic produce. 🥕
• Using fresh stocks, like a mix of chicken and turkey, enriches the soup’s flavor, allowing for creative combinations based on availability. 🍲
• Homemade soup can be a versatile dish, adaptable with various flavors, like added curry paste, for personalized taste preferences. 🍛
• Preserving leftover soup in containers in the freezer provides convenient and healthy meal options for busy nights. ❄️

Overview

Making curried lentil soup is not just about the end product; it's about navigating the cooking process with tips from traditional practices. Sarah of The Healthy Home Economist® delivers a comprehensive guide on soaking lentils to enhance nutritional value and digestibility, proving that a little preparation goes a long way. She shares her personal routine for creating heartwarming dishes that cater to health and soul alike, perfect for chilly evenings.

Sarah demonstrates how to integrate modern conveniences with age-old cooking wisdom. The key to her lentil soup lies in the soaking process, which involves adding filtered water and apple cider vinegar to the lentils, breaking down tough antinutrients. The soup becomes a symphony of flavors with caramelized onions and carrots in a butter-olive oil blend. This method speaks to Sarah's mastery in making nutritional, family-friendly meals.

Integrating practical advice on using fresh stocks and experimenting with curry pastes, viewers gain insight into personalizing flavors and optimizing food preservation. The handheld blender plays the hero as it simplifies the blending process directly in the cooking pot, marrying traditional cooking philosophy with today's kitchen technology. This episode offers a hearty, culinary journey into mastering lentil soup for everyday cooks.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Benefits of Lentil Soup The chapter introduces the making of curried lentil soup, emphasizing its popularity and benefits. Sarah from healthyhomeeconomist.com shares that the soup is a family favorite, particularly suitable for cold nights. It is also noted as beneficial due to its traditional chicken stock base, which can be helpful during times when stomach bugs are prevalent.
• 01:30 - 03:30: Soaking Lentils: The Process The chapter emphasizes the benefits of consuming homemade gelatin-based chicken stock to protect against intestinal illnesses. The speaker shares their personal practice of incorporating this into meals, especially during winter and flu seasons. The chapter proceeds to discuss the process of making lentil soup, starting with soaking lentils due to their anti-nutrient properties common to legumes.
• 03:30 - 05:30: Two-Day Pause and Adjustments In this chapter titled 'Two-Day Pause and Adjustments', the focus is on adapting a recipe due to the unavailability of certain ingredients. The narrator usually prepares curried lentil soup using green lentils. However, since the organic green lentils were not available at the store, they decided to experiment with red lentils for the first time. They express hope that the red lentils will turn out well and describe starting the process by soaking three cups of red lentils to eliminate anti-nutritional factors. This situation presents a scenario of adjusting to circumstances and being open to trying new approaches.
• 05:30 - 07:30: Cooking Ingredients Preparation The chapter titled 'Cooking Ingredients Preparation' talks about the process of improving the digestibility of certain foods, such as lentils, by soaking them in filtered water. This method helps unlock the nutritional benefits of the food, making it easier to digest. The transcript highlights the importance of using filtered water instead of tap water during the soaking process and takes into account the expansion of the ingredients, in this case, lentils, requiring more water to cover them.
• 07:30 - 09:30: Simmering Vegetables and Adding Stock The chapter titled 'Simmering Vegetables and Adding Stock' discusses the process of soaking vegetables, emphasizing that as they soak, they expand in size, requiring more water to fully cover them. The speaker suggests stirring the vegetables as they soak. There is also a mention of using a substitute for liquid whey, in this case, raw apple cider vinegar, adding three tablespoons to soak three cups of vegetables.
• 09:30 - 11:30: Cooking Lentils and Skimming Foam This chapter explains the process of preparing lentils by soaking them in water with added acidity to break down antinutrients. The narrator plans to leave the lentils to soak from morning until dinner time.
• 11:30 - 14:30: Adding Curry Paste and Final Touches In this chapter, the focus is on preparing lentil soup. The lentils were soaked for around 7 hours, although the recommended duration is between 7 to 18 hours. After soaking, due to a delay, there was a 2-day gap before the cooking resumed. The chapter begins with a recap of the soaking process, setting up the stage for the cooking of lentil soup.
• 14:30 - 16:30: Blending and Storing the Soup The chapter titled 'Blending and Storing the Soup' focuses on the practicalities of preparing soup, emphasizing that one shouldn't stress over the traditional step of soaking lentils. The speaker describes their approach to dealing with unexpected situations and time constraints by being flexible. Instead of fretting over not having soaked the lentils, the speaker simply rinsed them, drained them, and stored them in the refrigerator, demonstrating a practical and stress-free approach to cooking.
• 16:30 - 18:00: Conclusion and Traditional Cooking Tips The final chapter, 'Conclusion and Traditional Cooking Tips,' reflects on how modern technology can enhance traditional cooking methods. It appreciates how refrigerators and modern kitchen amenities allow for a more efficient and flexible cooking process compared to the past when such conveniences weren't available. The chapter provides an example of soaking lentils and storing them in the fridge for convenience, illustrating the synergy between tradition and technology in contemporary cooking.

Soaking Lentils Before Cooking — for Best Taste and Nutrition Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 good morning everyone this is Sarah of the healthyhome economist.com and for dinner this evening I'm going to be making curried lentil soup one of my family's absolute favorites it's going to be very cold tonight and this weekend so wonderful hearty soup uh is of great benefit um on such cold nights and also there's tummy bugs going around town so getting a wonderful soup that's made with traditional chicken stock is good
• 00:30 - 01:00 because uh frequent consumption of a gelatin based homemade chicken stock very much protects your family from intestinal illness and uh that is something that I try to incorporate and into our meals so they eat a lot of it during the winter and flu months so let me show you how to make a lentil soup first of all you have to soak your lentils right because they're a legume and like all legumes they have um anti-nutrients
• 01:00 - 01:30 in the um huls of the legum and I've got some beautiful um red lentils here I usually make my curried lentil soup with green lentils but the store did not have any organic green lentils so I'm actually making it for the very first time with these red lentils so hopefully it'll turn out well have a little of experiment going I've actually got three cups of these red lentils and the first thing you want to do to soak them to eliminate the anry nutrients nents to
• 01:30 - 02:00 improve digestibility and um to unlock the nutrition so that when you eat it it will be much easier to digest is to soak it of course and the first thing you want to do is add water I'm going to add a little bit more water here fil make sure you use filtered water do not use tap and I'm going to add one more cup because the lentils will expand
• 02:00 - 02:30 as they're being soaked they'll get larger so you want to put a little bit more water in there than you might think and stir it up a little bit and then I am actually out of liquid way liquid way is what I usually use to soak but since I'm out of liquid way you can substitute raw apple cider vinegar and I'm going to put in three tablespoons for to soak three cups cups
• 02:30 - 03:00 of lentils and adding this acidity to the water is what will break down the antinutrients in the lentils so what we're going to do is we're going to cover this I'm going to leave it right here on the counter it's now 10 o' in the morning so I'm going to leave this to soak until dinner time and then I'm
• 03:00 - 03:30 going to take the soaked lentils and cook it up and uh and make lentil soup with it and we'll pick up at that point hi everyone we're back and I soaked the lentils in the last little part of this video but guess what it's been 2 days okay I left them on the counter for about 10 hours you're supposed to soak them around 7even 7 to 18 hours something like that and I soaked them for 7 hours and I realized that I was just not going to be able to get back to shooting the rest of this
• 03:30 - 04:00 video um so did I fret no you don't fret you don't say oh I don't have time to soak lentils this traditional cooking thing is too hard I can't plan ahead enough to to soak the lentils no what you do and what I did it's no big deal life happens you just have to roll with it is I strained out all the water the soaking water I put more water in there to rinse the lentils and I drained it again I put the lid on it and I stuck it in the refrigerator so it's been sitting
• 04:00 - 04:30 in the refrigerator for 2 days so I've got soaped lentils ready to go and I'm just picking up where I left off 2 days later so that's how you roll with it with traditional cooking and the reason we can do that is because we have technology traditional peoples didn't have refrigerators they didn't have running water in the kitchen you can make use of all these wonderful modern tools that we have to make traditional cooking so much easier and so much more efficient than it ever was years ago 100 200 years ago so make use of the refrigerator if you soak some stuff and
• 04:30 - 05:00 you wanted to make it for dinner and it just doesn't happen just drain it rinse it and shove it in the refrigerator until you get to it okay so don't worry about it so here we got the got the lentil ready to go now that we have soaked lentils you can either cook the lentils until they're soft and use them for whatever dish you'd like make it into hummus or whatever um I'm sorry lentils don't go into hummus um chickpeas do but just make it into whatever lentil based dish you want in this case I'm going to use the lentils to make lentil soup we really like curried lentil soup in our
• 05:00 - 05:30 home so I'm going to quickly show you how to do that once you've got the lentils soaked which we do you're going to chop three onions and I've chopped them beforehand because if you've never chopped an organic onion wow it'll really make you cry I mean they're very strong organic onions are much stronger than regular store onions so I chopped them beforehand so I could kind of Cry In Peace So and I also chopped three organic carrots okay Cho those then the next thing we want to do is we want to
• 05:30 - 06:00 get a nice big pot we want to turn it on medium to high heat we're going to put in 2 tablespoons of approximately of butter do I measure it out no I don't I just you know chunk it in there air on the side of too much when it comes to butter always air on the side of too much then I take my extra virgin olive oil I'm also going to put two tablespoons of that in there do I measure it I tend not to I tend to just guesstimate with it so now that looks like about two
• 06:00 - 06:30 tablespoons so I'm going to uh stir that around get that going on the bottom of the pot and then I'm going to put in my carrots and my onions which this is going to be tricky so I've got all the carrots and onion and butter and olive oil in
• 06:30 - 07:00 there I'm going to put the lid on and I'm going to simmer this for about 20 to 30 minutes until everything is nice and soft woo those onions are strong my eyes are starting to water again so you're going to simmer until everything is nice and soft and we're going to pick it up then and we're going to finish up this soup in just a matter of minutes well we've Cooked our onions and carrots now they're nice and soft having cooked in the olive oil and the butter for a few minutes and uh once once they got kind of simmering I turned it down to low heat and it took about 20 minutes
• 07:00 - 07:30 25 minutes the next step is to take um 2 quarts of stock and in this I have a mixture of chicken and turkey stock feel free to mix stock if you don't have enough chicken stock or enough beef stock or whatever feel free to mix a lot of times I have actually not found any of my recipes to be um you know not good with one type of stock they may taste a little different but it seems like stock always produces a great product so don't
• 07:30 - 08:00 worry about mixing stocks if you need to to get as much stock as you need so right here I have um about a quart of chicken and a quart of turkey stock I'm going to pour this into the big pot with the onions and the chicken I'm going to turn the heat back up to medium to high and I'm going to take these um lentils that we have soaked in step one and I'm going to put them all
• 08:00 - 08:30 it looks like a lot of lentils doesn't it but we're making a big pot of lentil soup pour all these lentils into this soup we're going to mix it up now the next step is we're going to bring this to a boil and there's going to be a ton of foam that comes off the top of these lentils and we're going to skim it off because that's all the impurities more impurities even cuz we got a ton of
• 08:30 - 09:00 impurities off the lentils when we soaked them we're going to get even more when we cook them you can see why you need two steps to make lentils um nutrient-dense and digestible so we'll pick this up when this comes to boil and we'll show you what the foam looks like the lentil have come to a boil um with the stock and the onions and the carrots and as you can see I'm going to skim off this foam CU these are off flavors this get you want to get rid of this foam because this will make your soup taste a
• 09:00 - 09:30 lot better if you can get rid of uh all this foam okay or at least most of it don't you know go crazy and drive yourself insane trying to get every little tiny bit just get as close as you can don't worry about it if you don't get every little bit there I've got about 95% of it that's all you need to do and then you're going to give it um a quick stir
• 09:30 - 10:00 and then put the lid on we're going to turn it down to medium to low heat we're going to simmer this for about 20 minutes and then we'll put the final touches on our jumbo pot of lentil soup the lentils have been simmering for about 20 minutes so the next step is to add our Curry now you do not need to do this step if you don't like Curry skip the curry you can just have plain lentil soup but we do like curry in our house
• 10:00 - 10:30 so I'm going to add I like green curry in um in our lentil soup you can also use red curry yellow curry is also fine masaman Curry is also fine use any of those but for this particular one I prefer green curry so I'm going to put in a couple of tablespoons of green curry paste if you don't know where to get that your Asian store in town is probably a great place to go an Indian
• 10:30 - 11:00 um store would be good as well and just go ahead and and stir that in while it's still simmering on the stove it will dissolve very very quickly in the hot soup the next thing we're going to do is we're going to move this off the heat turn off the burner and the last step is to add some fresh lemon juice if you desire to an e/
• 11:00 - 11:30 of a cup to a/4 of a cup approximately and then you're going to want to add some good quality sea salt I have Himalayan sea salt here you can see it's pink if you have a sea salt and it's white guess what it's not sea salt it's refined salt that they call sea salt it's a marketing uh gimmick so make sure that you go get sea salt that has color to it it's either gray blue pink a mixture of color
• 11:30 - 12:00 in this case I'm just going to sprinkle in a little bit of Himalayan sea salt and I also really like green pepper corns I've got some organic green pepper corns here that I'm going to Freshly grind into the soup stir that in then the last step is really to let this sit for a while and to cool down and once it's cooled down to the point
• 12:00 - 12:30 where you know it's really not a burning it's nice and warm but it's not too hot then you're going to take this a handheld blender and if you are embarking on your traditional cooking adventure and you don't have one of these in your kitchen put this on your holiday gift list right now because you need one of these because what this allows you to do is to blend this soup right in the pot without transferring it to a blender or a Vitamix or something else you can blend it right here in the pot and get your soup ready to go so
• 12:30 - 13:00 make sure you get a handheld blender if you don't have one already so that's the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to cool this down and then I'm just going to blend it right in the pot and we're done so that is how you soak lentils make them into a quick dish we've got a gallon of soup here now we'll probably only use a quart of it for dinner and then once it's completely cooled down I'll put it in quart containers I'll freeze the soup in cart containers and there is your healthy fast food when you've got an evening
• 13:00 - 13:30 where you're crazy you can't get your meal you don't have any time to cook you can quickly pull that quart of pre-prepared lentil soup out of the freezer open it up thaw it right on the stove get it ready to go get a piece of wonderful souro bread and some butter and you've got dinner so this is how traditional cooking Works in our home I hope you've learned something from this lesson on how to soak lentils traditionally and make it into curried lentil soup this is Sarah the healthy home economist and I'm wishing you all
• 13:30 - 14:00 the best in the kitchen