A watercolour of dark green lentils in a glossy brown braise with soft onion, in a shallow pan
Generated with OpenAI gpt-image-1
Adapted from Lentilles au jus

Green lentils braised with yeast extract

An established dish converted to shelf-stable ingredients. Every substitution is documented below.

How long it keeps

About 6 months, set by Vegetable oil (sunflower or rapeseed), though 1 of 7 ingredients has no sourced figure, so the real limit may be shorter.

Indicative, for planning a build before you buy. The answer for a pack you already own is the best before date printed on it, and that only holds if it has been stored as the label says.

Serves
4
Burners
1
Pans
1
Water
1 L
Active
10 min
Total
40 min

Ingredients

Green lentils hold their shape where red ones collapse, so this comes out as distinct glossy lentils in a dark savoury juice rather than a puree. It is a side dish that quietly works as a main.

No salt goes in at the start, and not for the usual disputed reason about skins. It is that the yeast extract is already extremely salty and you cannot take it out again.

  1. Oil in the pan, dried onion in, and let it sizzle gently for a minute until it smells sweet rather than dusty. It will colour quickly, so keep it moving.
  2. Lentils in, stirred through the oil, then about 700 ml of water and the herbs. Bring up and simmer, lid ajar, for 25 to 30 minutes.
  3. The yeast extract goes in at 20 minutes, not at the start. Dissolve it in a little of the hot liquid first. Added early it catches on the base and turns bitter; added late it stays clean and savoury.
  4. When the lentils are tender and there is just a glossy amount of liquid left, take it off and stir in the vinegar.

The vinegar is not optional. Without it the dish is heavy and one-note, and the whole thing lifts the moment acid arrives. Pepper at the end.

Good under a fried egg if you have one, on toast if you have bread, and best of all with the flatbread on this site.

What this was adapted from

Lentilles au jus: the French method of braising green lentils in stock with a soffritto, so they come out savoury and glossy rather than plain

  • meat or vegetable stock → yeast extract loosened in water

    Stock is the whole flavour of the dish and a cupboard version has to come from somewhere. Yeast extract is glutamate and salt in concentrated form, which is most of what a long-simmered stock contributes, and it weighs 250 g for a year of cooking rather than a box of cubes for a month.

  • fresh onion, carrot and celery → dried onion flakes and dried mixed herbs

    The soffritto is doing sweetness and aroma. Dried onion rehydrated in the fat gives the sweetness; the herbs stand in for the aromatic lift. What is missing is the carrot's body, which the lentils supply themselves once they soften.