Lentil soup

Lentil stew is a stew dish. Main ingredient are lenses that are mostly cooked with greens, potatoes and bacon, bacon or cooked sausage to a stew.

Lenses are one of the first cultivated vegetables and stews with this legume are already known from the Old Babylonian kitchen by about 1700 BC. Early recipes for lentil stews found, inter alia around 200 AD in the late ancient Greece at Euthymus and in the 1st century AD the Roman gourmet Apicius. Compared with other foods lenses were relatively inexpensive at all times and, consequently, lentils were still in force in the Middle Ages as "poor food ".

Nowadays, there are lentil stew dishes in India and other Asian countries, where mainly used in Europe less common types of lentils, red lentils, for example, and is seasoned rather spicy or sweet and sour. In Europe, the brown Lentils are the most common. Contrary to a popular misconception lenses do not have to be soaked before cooking; they are after a cooking time of about 45 minutes until done. By pre- soaking, which was formerly common in fruits from back many harvest, can, however, reduce the cooking time. Before use, the washing of the lenses has been recommended, but this is now largely redundant, since contaminants in industrially manufactured packaging virtually no longer occur. Only at Bioware washing is recommended. In some German regions lenses with sliced ​​blood sausage, additional vinegar and sugar are served for seasoning according to personal taste. Other common side dishes are smoked meat, knockwurst, sausage, spicy sausages or wieners. In the Swabian Spaetzle with lenses, the lenses are made ​​with little liquid as a vegetable addition.

In India, a stew as Dal is widespread, often consists of lenses.