The Color of Lentils

L

lana-in-fl

Well-known member
Sounds like a book title.

OK, I am confused about lentils. I like lots of lentils in biryani. I used to buy whole small dark lentils, nearly black, with the orange insides, which were labeled "Whole Masoor". Then one day they weren't black any longer, they were mottled brown, but still orange and still labeled "Whole Masoor". They tasted the same as the black lentils, so I put up with the fact that they didn't have the same satisfactory look in the rice. So the last time I went to buy them, I found the packet marked "Whole Masoor", but this time it contained the larger, flat greenish lentils with the yellow insides and the proprietor obviously thought I was cracked when I asked for the small ones - he insisted there was no change. These do not taste the same to me, which is why I go to the Indian store to buy my lentils instead of buying these larger greenish things from the supermarket.

Am I cracked? Do *you* think they taste the same? Are they perhaps seasonal? Am I just crazy to eat biryani in high (and I mean high) summer so it doesn't matter what I put into it?

 
Yes, it is a problem

I've had similiar issues. The brown-skinned lentil that we normally buy in the US are traditionally labelled "the masoor" lentils (whether that is correct, I cannot say).

But then, there are the green ones, the orange ones, the black ones...

And yes, I'm with you, they have different tastes.

 
Lana, do you have a good recipe to share? I ran into the same thing with 'cracked wheat'

What is typically sold in health food stores is called "bulgar" with "(cracked wheat)" in parenthesis. I had a bread recipe that said to use "EITHER" bulgar or cracked wheat. So I assumed they were two different products. The cashier at the store INSISTED that they were one and the same.

See Internet text below for a description of the difference: bulgar is a bit processed, while the "cracked wheat" that you can buy at an Indian store is an unprocessed product. I would think the Indian product would need longer cooking with additional cooking moisture. I now have a bag from the Indian grocery store in Orlando, but haven't opened it yet.

Davidson says bulghur or bulgur or bulgar, which much of the rest of the world knows as burghul, is made by parboiling the wheat, drying it, then coarsely grinding it. At that point, the outer layers of the bran are removed — traditionally by hand — after which, the grains are cracked. It is generally available in three textures, fine, medium and coarse, and you can sometimes find organic burghul. After cracking, it is ready for steaming or boiling. The distinctive nutty taste, Davidson says, is the result of the inner layers of bran that are retained.

Now, the writers in this country, who take such delight in telling you that bulghur is not cracked wheat, skip the boiling and drying steps completely and simply crack the whole wheat berry. So you get all the bran in their cracked wheat. Madeleine Kamman, author of The New Making of a Cook (Canada, UK), and another of our food heroes, is in this camp. She says real cracked wheat is hard to come by in the United States — that some is imported from the Mediterranean — but that "one mostly has to settle for bulgur."

We hate it when our food heroes argue.

(A helpful reader has pointed out to us the general availability of cracked wheat in Indian markets, where it is sold under the name daliya. Cracked wheat is very common in north Indian cooking, according to our correspondent.)

 
Lana...from my Indian teacher in Cape Town the following is ....

known to the Indians...(I'ved used these terms here in the Caribbean and Indians know them too)

Masoor dhal...........Brown lentils
(round flat lentils used specifically for biryani or rice dishes and soup)

Masoor ni dhal........Split pink lentils (flat salmon colour are actually brown split lentils with outer husk removed..quick cooking)

Moong.................Green lentils/Murgh or mung beans
(Dark green, oval. Mild flavour enhanced by hing...I make a super moong dhal with gem squash if I can get the squash)

Moong dhal.............Split yellow (moong)lentils/maghni dhal
(small, flat, yellow, oval shaped lentils are the split form of whole moong)

Tur dhal/Toover dhal............Oil lentils/these are dark oily orange
(Dried split form of toover, it has a natural oil content)

Vaal ni dhal...........Split Indian Bean....(never used that one in the lessons. Large, cream coloured with a powdery texture and slightly bitter)

Dhal (itself).......a thick lentil puree (I have just that as soup sometimes, the orange split pea is the one I like)

Chana Dhal..............Split Chickpeas (Chana)

Urad Dhal...............Black gram (this is pale off-white in colour, usually prepared with oil dhal, chana and split moong dhal. Also used in Idli a Southern Indian breakfast cake)

In Vegetable, Lamb and
Chicken Briyani she uses masoor/brown lentils

Khitcheri (Yellow Lentil Rice) she uses Toover dhal

Hope this helps you...I have for years carried the info with me as I found it all a bit confusing....still get surprises somtetimes with the West Indan versions (not often these days though, brownie points;-))

 
Great info Joanie, but a question...is the puy green lentil entirely different or is that the green

lentil in your chart? I think I've seen larger, green lentils but the puy I have are really tiny and more black than green, it seems to me.

 
Nope, they puy lentil is a French lentil......smaller and they use those in salads here

France...or make patties with them. I love these Puy very much and I dont think they taste the same as moong

 
thank you for answering my question BEFORE I asked it, that's (more)

why I LOVE this group..
I recently needed PINK lentils for a baby food recipe and was tempted to sub but didn't...now I know the difference....

 
This is what I make, I'm sure it's not authentic but we like the taste

and it reminds us of the canned biryani we loved in SA. (I once told an Indian woman on the plane that we loved this and she went quite pale. She was very relieved when I said that I made it myself now.)

I cut about a pound of beef or lamb into small cubes, less than an inch. Brown these in oil (I use sunflower because it's what I grew up with), then remove the meat and cook a diced onion. Add either a can of diced tomatoes or some chopped fresh tomato, whatever you have. I left this out once by mistake, and the biryani was still good, but was less moist. Return the meat to the pan, and add three very heaping tablespoons of biryani paste. (I use the Patak brand, and I usually add half the jar.)Stir until well mixed, then add hot water to more than cover, and put a lid on the pan. While it cooks, sort about a cup of lentils (I probably use more), removing stones etc, then rinse and add these to the pan. Reduce the heat to simmer, cover, and cook for about 20 minutes. Then add 2 cups rice, some salt, and enough water - depends on how much is left in the pan. A Girl Scout I know says you can cook any amount of unmeasured rice by making sure there is an inch of water over the rice, so that is a rule of thumb (literally! smileys/smile.gif ). We think it's better moist, so I had rather add too much than too little. Replace the lid, bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for about 20 minutes. Stir before serving. Serves 6-8, freezes well. You can make this vegetarian by leaving out the meat; you could increase the lentils.

I'm sorry about the way I've written this, but it's one I haven't got around to quantifying yet. My sister once called me for a family recipe, and when I had dictated it to her, there was a short silence, then she said, "Do you realize that there wasn't a single quantity in that recipe?" On the other hand, my husband nearly laughed himself into hysterics when he watched me cooking one of his mom's recipes that I had quantified, and saw me measuring out olive oil instead of glugging it out.

 
Thanks Joanie, that's a great reference

but my problem is they are giving me pale green lentils and calling it masoor!

I also love the split orange lentil soup.

Gem squash! How I miss them! I found a place in Canada on-line that said they had seeds, but they have never replied to my requests.

 
Lana, those pale green ones must be...

split peas. I can not think of anything else....Buy some and boil them up and taste....you can make mushy peas...BUT NOT the English type that uses a different type of pea.
Think back...those pale geen ones came in the packets of "soup mix" with the pale orange lentils, dried onions etc....
They are not a lentil.
To prove it try them as I said.
Oh how I wish I could send you a variety from here.

As to the gem squash...a friend's daughter now lives in Virginia someplace, I believe...nice soil that grows stuff. She was given a packet of seeds that she tossed into the ground which grew well...I just was given some of those seeds although the last couple times I tried to grow them they have amounted to nothing more that a ping-pong ball size before being eaten by something (those damn iguanas??)

A thought, can you take a pic of these 'lentils' and post it......

 
Joanie!!!!! I found the seeds!!!!

Thank you for inspiring me to look again. Not only did I find the gem squash seed, but I found flat white pumpkin!!!!! Horrendously expensive, both of them - $7 for a packet of seeds, but well worth it if I can persuade them to grow.

And I'm sure the green things are lentils - here's a picture of a few of them (good idea) and I took the skin off one to show the yellow split insides. They are about 6mm in diameter, and flattish.

http://starbright.su.tripod.com/lentilscropa.bmp

http://www.discoverprotea.com/gem-squash-seed/

 
Boer pampoen...OH my goodness......

Looks good and worth trying to grow...wonder if I could get them to here...

The lentils look like lentils you get here in the dish called "rice 'n peas"
they are not moong dhal yet the inside is yellow so they could be a cultivar...who knows these days. But they are lentils, not the split peas I was thinking by your description.

The gem squash my friend described was "one kind was soft, deep yellow and creamy, the other was more as we knew them, stringy and bright yellow"...actually I never did really like the latter but have had some deep yellow ones in the apst few years..... last of the produce given to me off yachts that have been delivered from SA to here...these are always yellow skinned...did you ever know yellow skinned gems before? and they were pretty soft skinned too.

I just dont know.

The pic in the link you sent of the protea in front of a gable...well it could be the gable of my parent's house they built and we lived in for 20 years wow...homeeesick!!!

 
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