22 July 2011


This is a new meatless main dish I tried last night.  My friend Barbara knew that I do meatless meals one night a week, and she had tried these and loved them so she passed the recipe on to me.  It came from the website Eat at Home.  Here's my amended version.

Lentil Tacos

Ingredients:
1 cup lentils
1 tbsp olive oil
½ onion, diced
2¼ cups chicken broth
6 taco shells
Lettuce
Salsa or taco sauce
Cheese
Sour cream

Directions:
Rinse and drain the lentils and drain.  Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Sauté the onion until slightly tender.  Add the lentils and taco seasoning; cook for a minute.  Add the broth and bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for about 30 minutes.  Uncover and cook a few more minutes to thicken.  

Use this just like you would taco meat.  Place a spoonful of the lentils in taco shells and top with lettuce, salsa, cheese, sour cream, or whatever else you like on your tacos.

Makes 6 servings.

This was really good!  I'm not going to lie to you and tell you it tastes just like the beef; it doesn't.  But it's really good in its own right.  My meat-loving husband actually said that he likes these just as much, if not more, than any taco he's ever had.  That's pretty good!

The lentils are really easy to make, but best of all, they are super cheap.  This amount of lentils cost me less than 36 cents.  Wow!  I love cheap food!  Some people do the Meatless Monday thing to be healthier, or to be more environmentally friendly, but my main reason is to save some money (although the healthier aspect runs a very close second).  So these definitely fit the bill!

I did change the recipe slightly from the original.  I used my own taco seasoning instead of the seasonings listed in the recipe.  It also called for adding salsa to the lentils right at the end of cooking.  I left that out and just put salsa on my tacos separately.  I also reduced the amount of chicken stock slightly because I really had to cook it a long time with the lid off to get the liquid to reduce.



 Not a great picture, but here are the cooked lentils all ready to go into tacos.


This is good on either soft or crunchy shells, but crunchy is my favorite.

Thanks so much for the recipe, Barbara!  If anyone else has any good meatless main dishes, please share them with me.  You can comment here, or on my Facebook page.

Tagged: ,

0 comments:

Post a Comment