This is an easy to cook dish which tastes great because it contains bacon (well, duh!). Obviously, it should not be repeated too often because it contains bacon (well, duh!).

You need:


  • Rice (strictly speaking, you don’t need this)
  • Green lentils (I prefer green lentils because they hold their shape better for this, but other lentils work well too. I usually stock red and green.)
  • Bacon (you can replace this with any kind of fat for cooking)
  • Onion

Cook the rice. I use my pressure cooker with which I have a long standing relationship(*). I use rice to water at a 2/3 ratio. I use a drinking glass to measure. 1 glass of rice and 1.5 glasses of water. I let it rip until max pressure has been reached. Then I switch it off. Very easy, never burns.

(*). I’ve known my pressure cooker longer than DW, actually. Hey, I even wrote a tribute to my pressure cooker; in retrospect, I’ve yet to write a tribute to DW—I hope she’s not reading this.

I use a deep cast iron pan like this one (we got it as a wedding present) to fry the bacon. Here I just get a normal pack of bacon and cut of an inch which makes for 8 pieces or so. This becomes the grease (and the eventual heart attack). As the bacon fries, I chop and onion. This goes on top once the bacon is done. Once the onion is transparent and slightly brown, I dumb the lentils on top. I’d estimate a couple of cups, maybe more(*). I cover those with water. I then turn down the gas and let the water absorb. Put the lid on. Check every 5 minutes and add water so it doesn’t burn. After 20 minutes, taste the lentils. Keep going until they are soft. When they are soft, take the lid off and the let the remaining water evaporate off.

(*) You really have unlimited freedom with the lentil to onion to bacon ratio. The more bacon, the better it’ll taste, and the sooner you’ll have a coronary heart failure 😀

Eat the lentils with the rice which should be done by now. You can cut any kind vegetables, tomato, cucumber, lettuce on top of this. Works well with soy sauce.

Originally posted 2010-06-23 22:44:23.