Lentil Stock
1/2 pound lentils 3 quarts cold water Small piece of bay-leaf 1 teaspoon salt 1 onion Wash the lentils; soak them in one quart of water all night. Tie them in muslin, and put them into a saucepan, with the water in which they were soaked, two quarts besides, and add the salt. Bring to boiling point; skim. Add the onion and bay-leaf; boil for two hours. Take out the lentils, strain, and it is ready for use.
A vegetarian base stock rather than a finished soup: the lentils are bagged so they flavour the water without clouding it, then lifted out whole. A few points make the process quicker and the result more useful.
- What you end up withThree quarts of water reduced over two hours of boiling gives roughly two quarts of thin, savoury stock. It is a substitute for meat broth in soups and sauces, not a soup in itself.
- The muslin bag is the pointTying the lentils keeps the pulses intact and the liquid clear. Cheesecloth doubled over, or a large tea/spice bag, does the same job; leave slack, since lentils swell to roughly two to three times their volume.
- Skip the overnight soakLentils sold today cook through in 25-40 minutes without soaking. Soaking was the usual instruction in older books, commonly explained by pulses that might be old and dry by the time they reached the kitchen. If you skip it, simply start with the full three quarts of cold water.
- Two hours is for extraction, not tendernessThe long boil is there to pull flavour and body into the water, so it is not excessive here. Keep it at a bare, steady simmer rather than a rolling boil, or you will lose more liquid than you want.
- Salt early, but lightlyA teaspoon in three quarts is mild seasoning, which is right for a stock that will be salted again in whatever dish uses it. Do not increase it at this stage.
- Don't waste the lentilsThe cooked lentils in the bag are bland but perfectly edible. Press them through a sieve into part of the stock for a thick purée soup, or dress them with oil and vinegar.
- AromaticsOne whole peeled onion and a piece of bay leaf is the minimum. A carrot, a celery stalk and a few peppercorns cost nothing and give a rounder stock; add them with the onion, not at the start, since the initial skimming is easier in clear water.
- Keeping itCool quickly and refrigerate up to four days, or freeze in measured portions. Reduced by half it freezes into concentrated cubes.
Meatless cookery books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries faced one structural problem: almost every soup, sauce and gravy in the standard repertoire began with meat stock. Their answer was a set of substitute stocks built on pulses, root vegetables or cereals, and lentil stock was among the most useful because lentils carry a genuinely savoury, faintly meaty depth that carrot or turnip water does not. Lentils themselves are among the oldest cultivated foods in the Near East and are often said to have been associated in Europe with fasting and Lenten cookery, which is part of why they were the obvious pulse to reach for when a cook needed body in a pot without meat.