When making my meat sauce, I typically use ground turkey, however I wanted to experiment with lentils! And guess what?! My hubby didn't even know he was eating lentils til after the fact! I mainly decided to play around with the switch due to cost (a 16 oz bag of dried lentils is only roughly $1 & has 14 servings!) And it is not as hard to cook these dried beans, believe it or not. Here is what I did:
I cooked 1/4 cup of dried lentils (1/4 cup of dried lentils makes approx 1/2 cup of cooked lentils). How you cook them? Easy. I tossed 1/4 cup of dried lentils in with 1/2 cup of water (you double the amount, so if you're cooking 1 cup of dried lentils, you add 2 cups of water) & bring the water to a boil, once it starts boiling, lower the heat & allow it to simmer, covered for approx 15-20 mins (the more beans you add, the more cooking time is required).
Once done, remove from heat. I used my old fashion mortar and pestle to "ground" my lentils. You can flavor at this point or just add to your favorite marinara sauce (marinara sauce recipe for another day) and add to your pasta!
Keep in mind, when using this as a substitute, you will end up with more carbs because of the lentils, however below is the nutritional information taken from the recipe calculator from Calorie Count, based off of 1/8 cup of lentils (which is what I typically use on a per person basis).
Calories 85
Total Fat .2 g
Cholesterol 0mg
Sodium 1mg
Total Carbs 14.4g
Dietary Fiber 7.3g
Protein 6.2g
Good points
Very low in saturated fat
No cholesterol
Very low in sodium
Low in sugar
Very high in dietary fiber
High in iron
High in manganese
High in phosphorus
High in thiamin
No bad points!
Hope you've enjoyed this post & bon appetit!
Nancy
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