Salad Vegan Cold

Green lentil salad

Name: Green lentil salad
Prep time: 35 min
Cook time: 18 min
Total time: 53 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 300 g Green lentils; 1.5 litres Water for boiling; 2 pcs Bay leaves; 5 tbsp Olive oil; 2 tbsp White wine vinegar; 1 tsp Mustard seeds, crushed; 1 pcs Red onion; 2 pcs Tomatoes; 50 g Parsley, a bunch; 0.5 tsp Black pepper; 6 g Salt

A lentil goes on cooking in its own heat for three or four minutes after the pan comes off. The eighteen minutes in this recipe already has those minutes counted in.

Pulses · French · Budget · Vegan · Weekend batch · School lunchbox · Under 30 minutes

53 minTime

451Kcal / serving

1805Total kcal

Preparation: 15 min
Cooking: 18 min
Resting: 20 min
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Very cheap
Season: Spring, Summer, Autumn

Where this dish comes from

Most arguments about cooking times ignore carryover. Three hundred grams of hot lentils sitting in a colander take four or five minutes to fall from 95 °C to 60 °C, and above 60 °C the starch goes on gelling. So lentils that looked exactly right in the pan are overcooked by the time they reach the plate. The times written for a French lentille salad look short at first glance for this reason: they are not short, they are measured properly.

Method

Before the heat goes on

Rinse the lentils; they need no soaking.
Have a wide tray ready under the colander: spread out, the lentils cool fast.

You will need: A pan · A colander · A wide tray

Boil the lentils with the bay leaves in plenty of unsalted water for eighteen minutes.

Look for Bitten, a lentil should still have the faintest resistance at its centre.

Why At eighteen minutes the seed is still slightly firm; the remaining three or four minutes of cooking happen in the colander, from its own heat. Lentils boiled twenty-five minutes turn to purée in a salad. The bay goes into the water at this stage and leaves with it: its whole job is to put its smell into the seed.

If it went wrong

If they have gone too far, draining and rinsing them at once in cold water stops the cooking, but the ones that broke do not come back. Build it as a purée instead: olive oil, vinegar and parsley turn it into something to put on bread.
Drain them, throw the bay away and spread the lentils one layer deep on a wide tray to cool for ten minutes.

Look for The steam should stop coming off the tray and the seeds separate from one another.

Why Heaped in a colander, the middle of the pile stays above 80 °C and goes on cooking; spread on a tray the same quantity is below 50 °C in three minutes. It is the step most often left out of salad recipes and the one that makes the most difference.
Whisk the oil, vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper together and pour it over while the lentils are still warm.

Look for The lentils should be warm enough to hold in the hand, and should shine when the dressing goes on.

Why A warm seed takes the dressing up and a cold one does not: above 40 °C the starch gel is still open and lets the liquid in. Poured on while it is hot, though, the volatile acid in the vinegar leaves with the steam and the salad tastes of nothing. The window is 40–50 °C.

Salt · 1.47% Right in the window. Flavours sharpen, bitterness retreats, water is held.
Leave it twenty minutes, then fold in the red onion, tomato and parsley.

Look for There should be no free liquid in the bottom of the bowl.

Why The vegetables wait until last: tomato and onion start giving up water the moment they meet the dressing, and left twenty minutes there is a pool in the bottom of the bowl. The waiting time is for the lentils to draw the dressing in.

Starch still asleep The granules are just floating there doing nothing. No body arrives before 62 °C.

Salt · 0.71% Right in the window. Flavours sharpen, bitterness retreats, water is held.

What the model could follow

This recipe was run through the engine step by step — what goes in when, and at what temperature and for how long. The reactions above come from that run.

peak 100 °C · 51 minutes · engine 1.0.0 · confidence low

Servings

4

Ingredients

300 g Green lentils
1.5 litres Water for boiling the cooking water is drained away
2 pcs Bay leaves stays behind in the cooking water
5 tbsp Olive oil
2 tbsp White wine vinegar
1 tsp Mustard seeds, crushed
1 pcs Red onion
2 pcs Tomatoes
50 g Parsley, a bunch
0.5 tsp Black pepper
6 g Salt

What did you think

Who is eating

Everyone A baby under one Pregnant A child An athlete

The 1 rules we hold for this group did not fire for this dish. That does not mean the dish is suitable for them; it means those particular rules did not apply.

Not about the dish — about the person

Salt in a day

5 g 2000 mg

An adult Context established

Under 5 g of salt a day, which is under 2000 mg of sodium — just under a teaspoon. A label usually gives sodium, and the two are not the same number: salt is about 2.5 times the sodium.

World Health Organization, Salt reduction

Free sugars

10%

Strong recommendation — adults and children Context established

The same share for adults and for children. Ten per cent of a 2000-calorie day is roughly 50 g of sugar, and a single can of a fizzy drink is more than half of it. The risk of weight gain, obesity and tooth decay rises above this line.

World Health Organization, Information note about intake of sugars recommended in the WHO guideline for adults and children, 2015

What is done, and what is not: With somebody pregnant at the table, unpasteurised milk and cheeses come out of every suggestion, the salt threshold is held at the adult figure and the free-sugar one is applied strictly — all three sourced, all three in "Sources and method". That much happens on its own and you do not have to remember it. On caffeine, fish and mercury, iron and folate this site has no source; do not read them here, ask the doctor following the pregnancy. The difference between those two sentences is the point: the first is done, the second is not.

This choice is not stored anywhere.

Diets

Gluten-free Suitable as it is
Vegan Suitable as it is
Vegetarian Suitable as it is
Lactose-free Suitable as it is
Diabetes-friendly It depends

This verdict comes from the recipe\u2019s own ingredient list. The label on a packaged ingredient is always the last word.

Calculated nutrition

451.3 kcal
20.1 g Protein
54.7 g Carbohydrate
18.4 g Fat
10 g Fibre

Per serving, computed from raw weights as bought. Cooking drives water off and sometimes adds fat, and neither is accounted for.

composition figures unsourced · held in the system

After the heat goes off

Serving

At room temperature. Give it twenty minutes out of the fridge: cold olive oil shuts the taste down.

Keeping · 3 days

Three days in the fridge, and four if you keep the tomato separate.

Cooling and reheating

It is not reheated but eaten cold; letting it come back to room temperature is all it needs.

Does not freeze

It does not freeze: ice crystals tear the seed coats and it thaws as a purée.

What is left

Spooned into a hot soup, or crushed into a sandwich spread.

For a child

Being cold and sharp with vinegar, small children can find it harsh: lifting their portion before the dressing and mixing it with olive oil alone works better. For 12–36 months the seeds need no crushing, as lentils are soft already. Vinegar and salt are not suitable for a baby under one.

Around training

A portion carries 17 g of protein and slow carbohydrate: it suits a lunchbox, or a meal two hours before training.

If you have not got it

Vinegar → Lemon Lemon works and stays gentler; the sharp back-note of the vinegar goes.
Green lentils (dry) → Black-eyed peas (dry) Black-eyed peas also stay whole but take twenty-four minutes; the carryover rule is the same.

Where to go from here

Cold The method this recipe rests on
Green lentils (dry) What it does in heat, water and acid
Tomato What it does in heat, water and acid
Red onion What it does in heat, water and acid
White bean salad Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Black-eyed pea salad Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Green lentil stew Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Budget Other recipes that answer the same need
Vegan Other recipes that answer the same need
Weekend batch Other recipes that answer the same need
School lunchbox Other recipes that answer the same need
Under 30 minutes Other recipes that answer the same need

Taste profile

What it tastes like

No axis sits clearly above the average: a balanced recipe.

Sweet 13
Salty 7
Sour 19
Bitter 16
Umami 20
Heat 8
Richness 16
Aroma 46

This profile is computed rather than measured: the role-weighted average of its ingredients’ taste vectors, shifted by what the cooking does. The thin line is the database average on that axis.

Computed similarity