how i: cook lentil stew

On Saturday, I suddenly craved a good lentil stew and realized that I had never made one in my life. This filled me with incredible embarrassment because I didn’t know whether it was easy or difficult. What I did know was that I wanted homemade lentils and had plenty of time in case things got complicated.

The mission was simple: lentils with chorizo. So, I did the obligatory search on ChatGPT, made my shopping list, and went to the supermarket to buy the missing ingredients from my pantry (without first asking what things I should consider before starting the preparation, big mistake).

The list included the essentials: potatoes, carrots, garlic, onion, bell pepper, tomato, ham, chorizo, and of course, lentils. In the end, I had to swap the chorizo for chistorra, slightly changing the name of the recipe, but the result was almost the same, so it didn’t really matter.

The preparation was simple: make the sofrito, add the rest, cook for 30 minutes, and correct the seasoning at the end… or so I thought.

After 45 minutes, the lentils were still hard as rocks and nearly dried out. This happened because I didn’t soak them before cooking and added salt during the process, which made the cooking time longer, just over an hour. So my advice is simple: soak the lentils for 2 hours beforehand and add salt at the end. That way, they’ll surely be ready in less than 30 minutes.