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By Karen Hursh Graber, writing from Mexico
For a versatile, fast-cooking, and healthy addition to menus, look no further than the small but mighty lentil. A member of the legume family (which includes dried beans, indispensable ingredients in Mexican cuisine), the lentil is one of the oldest foods known to mankind.
Archaeologists have traced lentil cultivation as far back as 8,000 BC, when it first began in the Middle East. From there, it spread to Greece, where the lentil’s economic profile made it food for the peasants, and to Egypt, where its nutritional profile made it food for the pharaohs.
The Egyptian noble class so highly valued the lentil’s protein-dense, heart-healthy properties that its seeds were entombed in the pyramids along with the rulers. In Imperial Rome, lentil recipes were included in Apices, the 4th to 5th century cookbook for the luxury-loving upper classes. There’s a biblical connection, too: In the Book of Genesis, Esau sold his birthright for a pottage of lentils.
Widely consumed throughout the Mediterranean region, lentils were standard fare for the Spaniards, who brought them to the New World, where they became a staple of the Mexican diet. They became a staple crop, too.
Today, Mexico is among the top 20 lentil producing countries in the world, with 75 percent of the legumes grown in Michoacan, and the rest in Guanajuato. But this production cannot fill the country’s increasing demand. Mexicans consume 30,000 metric tons of lentils a year, creating a need for importation, mostly from Canada.
Local Ingredients, Regional Recipes
Although lentils are inexpensive, they—like most legumes—depend on other elements for flavor. This makes them highly adaptable to the different local ingredients that characterize Mexico’s regional cuisines.
In Oaxaca, where tropical fruit is abundant, cooked lentils are combined with pineapple and plantain, then seasoned with cloves and allspice to create a traditional, typically southern Mexican combination of fruit and spices.
In Querétaro, where rainfall is scarce for most of the year and the nopal cactus proliferates, a lentil soup with nopales and jalapeños is a local favorite.
In Puebla, cooked lentils are incorporated into a meatless dish with the region’s poblano chiles.
And in the Yucatan, lentils are almost always prepared with pork. The typical Yucatecan lentil dish, for example, contains at least three kinds of pork—bacon, pork shoulder and ham, and sometimes chorizo.
Chorizo also is commonly paired with lentils in Central Mexico, where it enlivens tomato-based lentil soups and stews—sometimes in concert with the chipotle, another favorite ingredient in the region.
Restaurant Lentil Dishes
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Lentil Salad with Greek Feta and olive oil
Once considered “poor man’s food,” lentils—which come in many colors, including brown, green, red, yellow and black—have become a favorite with today’s health-conscious, nutrition-savvy diners.
They can team with meat, poultry and seafood; and when prepared without meat, they fit easily into vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free menu sections.
Creative chefs see lentils as a blank canvas, ready to be embellished with Mexico’s vibrant array of chiles, herbs and spices. The brown lentils known as “Spanish pardiñas” and the large yellow lentils called macachiados are those most commonly used in Mexico. Eye-catching black lentils, also called “caviar lentils,” also often appear on restaurant menus—especially with chicken or fish. One example: the roasted salmon with black lentils served at the elegant The Restaurant in San Miguel de Allende. And soft, easily pureed red lentils are frequently used for making soup, like the one served at Sir Winston Churchill’s in Mexico City.
Other dishes featuring lentils include the soup with a tomato and fresh herb base at Hecho en Mexico in San Miguel de Allende, and soup flavored with chunks of Iberico ham at Restaurante Josecho in Querétaro.
Besides their common use in soups and stews, lentils also can be used as the basis for salads and as a thickener in vegetable and meat stews. And when combined with other ingredients, they make delicious spreads and dips, like the beautiful lentil and beet hummus at Rosetta in Mexico City.
When pressed for a menu idea, take a look around the kitchen, and chances are you will be inspired by an ingredient that would make a tasty dish when combined with the small, but hard working, lentil.
Karen Hursh Graber is a regular contributor to el Restaurante. Click here to read her article about potatoes on Mexican menus.