Recipe: Lentil Pasta Sauce

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Lentil Pasta Sauce

Ingredients:

• Lentils, about 1 cup / 250 g.
• Canned tomato, crushed or cubed or whatever, about 28 oz / 800 g.

... and whatever your favorite pasta sauce secret ingredients are - ours are:

• Part of an onion, if we have some, chopped small (can substitute onion powder).
• Olive oil (unadulterated - look up how to get real olive oil in your country because there's a lot of fake stuff).
• Tomato paste.
• Garlic, if we have some, chopped small (can substitute garlic powder).
• Oregano.
• Ground cumin (balances the onion).
• Salt and/or soup base. (The brand our groceries have is Better Than Boullion, except they presumably know how to spell bool-yon, the soup cube things.) (Editor: it's "bouillon".)

Directions:

• Rinse the lentils and soak them for an hour.
• If you have veggies (onions and/or garlic), cook those in the olive oil, give 'em some color. We added salt to our onions the day we wrote this recipe because that helps them flavor the oil.
• Feel free to squirt some tomato paste in after the veg is colored - it won't do it any harm to toast, and it makes us feel like a YouTube cook.
• Open the big can of tomato and dump that in. Use the can to top it off with more water, now and as needed.
• Drain the lentils and dump those in too.
• Add your remaining pasta sauce secret ingredients.
• Put the lid ajar on top, removing to stir at whatever frequency means it doesn't burn. Keep it bubbling, keep enough water in the mix to make those lentils cook.

The sauce is done when the lentils are done - like 30-60 minutes probably. Produces enough sauce for about 2 lb / 1 kg dry weight of pasta. Freezes well. Can easily be made vegan.

Texture note: the lentils are whole and very present in this one - if little round discs with a thin shell and kinda crumbly interior are a dealbreaker for you, this sauce will break your deal. If, on the other hand, that sounds like good textural variety, cool!