A few years ago Nate came home with a five gallon bucket full of lentils. I am not a food storage guru and I'd never eaten lentils before. All of a sudden I had 5 gallons worth to start rotating through our meal schedule.
I did a Google search for lentil recipes. One of the recipes I found quickly became a regular in our dinner line-up: lentil tacos. Now I am trying to have several meatless meals a week and this recipe fits the bill perfectly.
I found the original recipe here. I made a few minor changes so my altered recipe is below:
Lentil Tacos
Ingredients:
1 finely chopped onion
1 minced garlic clove (or garlic powder if you don't have garlic cloves)
1 tsp vegetable oil
1 cup dried lentils, rinsed
1 TBSP chili powder
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried oregano
2 1/2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
salsa
Directions:
In a skillet, cook the onion and garlic in the oil until the onions are soft. Add the lentils and cook for about a minute. Add the broth, chili powder, cumin, and oregano. Stir and bring to a boil. Then reduce heat and cover, allowing it to simmer until the lentils are cooked. I have found the cook time depends on altitude. When I lived in Utah it took 45 minutes to an hour for the lentils to cook through and be softened. Now that I live in Pennsylvania I can cook the lentils in 30 - 40 minutes.
After the lentils are cooked, add salsa. I usually add enough to get salsa spread evenly through the lentils. The original recipe calls for one cup. I probably add about that much salsa but I never measure it.
Serve with tortillas, cheese, sour cream, lettuce, and your other favorite taco toppings.
This recipe has become a staple at our house. Nate has even said he doesn't miss the meat when we have these tacos. What type of meatless meals do you cook?
Pasta is probably my family's favorite meatless meal. We love alfredo pasta, with a really yummy homemade recipe.
ReplyDeleteOur family loves spaghetti or pasta nights for meatless meals. We also do a lot of veggie stir fry with rice (and I usually cook salmon with that, which isn't quite as meaty but still probably falls in that category). This looks like a great recipe!
ReplyDeleteI have a cilantro lime soup recipe that has lots of vegetables and no meat. Maybe we should share our meatless recipes??? Eating less meat is something we would like to do more of as well.
ReplyDeleteWe should share our recipes! We try to eat some meatless meals too! Soups is always the easiest it seems. We have a vegetable chili we like, especially with sweet potato biscuits and a lentil soup recipe that is pretty basic that we also like with biscuits. I am intrigued by lentil tacos, tacos without pinto beans seems crazy but I want to give it a try!
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