Since the weather in Minnesota has decided to go back to what it should be (in the 40’s), I decided to make soup but not just any ordinary soup — lentil soup. Yum!
Unfortunately, as the picture above shows, the soup I was trying to make was not going to be successful — at least not following the recipe I was using. I don’t understand it as I’ve made this soup so many times and have never had any problems. The recipe said to put the lentils in 7 cups of water and add 2 bay leaves. That was not a problem.
I used water that was filtered through my Brita instead of tap water. And then, I let it boil and this is what I got …
Yeah, what happened? I really don’t know and continued to be baffled by it.
I decided to turn on the scientific side of my brain (which is pretty much non-existent) and determine the cause of this, uh, disaster. It has to be the water or the bay leaves, I reasoned, so I took a smaller pot, added filtered water from the refrigerator and the 2 bay leaves then let it boil.
Okay — the bay leaves boiling in the water are fine.
Then I added brown lentils. Oh dear! What is happening??
One last scientific experiment, I thought. I put filtered water in a pot and added red lentils instead of the brown ones and they boiled just fine.
I never knew that lentils could go bad. I can recall having a bag of lentils in my cupboard, opened or unopened, for a couple years and never having this problem. And I’ve never had to remove the lentils from the bag they came to store them in a container as I’ve read others have done.
A search on the internet revealed that there are various thoughts on whether lentils can go bad. One person said that you should use the lentils within 12 months although they shouldn’t go bad. Another person said that lentils last a lifetime. Have you ever had this experience?
These lentils didn’t last a lifetime. In fact, I’ve only had this bag of lentils for 6 months or so.
What happened to my lentil soup? Well, I wound up using red lentils and changing the recipe completely around using the basic lentil recipe but with a few changes. More on that later.
Thoughts anyone?
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