Vegan Lentil Salad Recipe With Red Wine Vinaigrette

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Hello and welcome to Freshly Served, the healthy vegan cooking show. I’m Heather and tonight we are making a red wine lentil salad. Lentils obviously a good source of protein for us vegans.

So to start we got the pan heated up back here and I’m using a sauce pan because I’m going to get the lentils in the same pot, this way I can add water to this after I’m done sautéing the onion and garlic which of course is my favorite part of the meal smells delicious.

So if you will hear that start to sizzle just a little bit as I throw them in that’s good, that means the pot was nice and hot to start with. And I’m using olive oil, I’ll just get the onions coated in the oil and then I let them simmer for a little bit while I get the rest of the ingredients going.

And while the onions and garlic were cooking I diced the carrots which I now going to throw in with these guys. Again just stir it around and then we let is sauté for a few minutes.

So I don’t like carrots that are too too cooked, I like them to stay a little bit crunchy. What I’m waiting for here is just to make sure the carrots are cooked just enough that they keep their flavor when I put the lentils in the water in here.

So, I’m ready for the lentils and I’m just gonna throw them in. I’ve got a cup and a bay leaf, that’s what I’m gonna use for seasoning. So get the lentils stirred in with the onions, the garlic and the carrots so I’m not adding any salt or pepper at this point because if I add salt now it’s gonna interfere with how the lentils cook.

And what we’re gonna do is steep this lentils and what that means is if you think about it in terms of like steeping tea, when you steep tea you put it on boiling water but you don’t boil it and then you let the water draw out the flavor of the tea leaves.

So in this case, what we’re doing is adding water to these lentils and I’ve got two cups of water to the one cup of lentils. I’m gonna turn this up a little bit to medium high so I get that boiling and so it’s gonna draw the flavor out of the vegetables while it cooks the lentils.

But what happens is when you steep something as in food as suppose to tea where there’s water leftover. In food your gonna end up with no water left and these lentils are just gonna be in some nice moist vegetables so the flavor comes out of the food but then again it get suck back into the lentils and back into the carrots and things so that the flavors are all gonna stay in the dish. It’s gonna be super yummy and the lentils will take probably about 20 minutes.

You don’t need to make them too too soft because we’re putting this on salad so it’s nice to have some good texture. But they do need to cook so give them about 20 minutes.

And actually while those guys are cooking, I’m gonna put together the dressing so that it has time to combine the flavors together so I have here some beautiful red wine vinegar and some olive oil and I’m going to mix these one to one.

So if I look at how much vinegar I have in there and add about the same amount of olive oil and most people tell you to do a ratio of more olive oil or more oil in general to vinegar for salad dressings.

If you’re doing a dressing for a bean or a lentil which is another type of legume you want to have about equal amounts oil and vinegar or whatever other liquid you’re using.

And I’m gonna add some sea salt, some black pepper and that’s all I’m going to put in there give it a little whisk also great if you have a jar you can just shake this up. Lovely!

Now the salt is essential to get into flavor the lentils. It also going to bring the vinegar and the oil together otherwise they will stay separate. The red wine vinegar giving a really nice pinkie color to the dressing and I got some little flax of peppers in here as well.

Alright! I’m getting my sunflower crumble ready to go but my lentils have just started to come to a boil so what I’m gonna do is to steep them. I will turn them down to simmer rather than fully boil.

Gives a different texture to the lentils, a hard boil will keep them really nice and solid whereas steep will soften them up a little bit. So I’ve got some sunflower seeds that I ground up in my coffee grinder.

I’m going to put them in a container and I’m using a container that I’m gonna put in the fridge afterwards because I’m only gonna use part of this today. While I’m making it, I’m making it with an extra because I think I’m going to use some tomorrow for dinner.

Ok, so I’ve got sunflower seeds ground here. I will add some sea salt and you want a good amount of salt in here because this crumble is kind of like an idea of feder kind of cheese and it needs to be salty.

Now key ingredient for this one is nutritional yeast, most of the time I say nutritional yeast is optional because it is just for flavoring but in this case the flavor of the nutritional yeast is what makes it taste cheesy. So you could try it without it but I really don’t think it would be the same kind of thing.

So that’s all we got in there, just stirring it around to evenly distribute throughout there and then I will add some olive oil just enough to bring the seeds together with the salt and the nutritional yeast and that’s it. That’s all there is to it.

Alright! My lentils have been going for about 25 minutes I gave them a little taste test. They are feeling just soft but not too soft so it will not fall apart in my salad which is what I like.

Now there is some liquid leftover so what I’m gonna do is just drain off the excess. A lot of it has been absorbed by the lentils and back into the carrots but there’s just a bit leftover and what I wanna do with added dressing today so I don’t want them to be too wet.

I’m going to add my dressing which I’ll gonna whisk up a little bit to make sure it’s fully mix. I’m gonna pour most of this on the lentils but I’m saving a bit to put into the lettuce that I’m gonna use as a salad base for these lentils.

So, I’ll stir that, take out the bay leaves coz you really don’t want to eat them. I use two because I have tiny ones that I got from a friend’s tree. So I give that a stir. And then I’m going to mix in the chard that I chopped up.

Next, some beautiful rainbow chard, Chard has big thick stems which you can cut off if you don’t like. Phil’s not a big fan of it so I’m leaving that out tonight although I usually use them.

Now what’s gonna happen is I’m just putting the chard in for a few minutes so that it wilts and to help that wilts draw the moisture so I’m gonna sprinkle sea salt on there and that will help draw the moisture out of the chard and get it cooked. I probably should have used a bigger pot, this one is gonna be tight.

So I managed to get my chard done in there. It does shrink down of course as all greens do when they heat and what I’m gonna do is leave this on the heat for at least 10 minutes so that the dressing can works its way into the lentils.

I did not cook them with any salt of course so you need to give at least 10 minutes for these beans to soak up that liquid. I’ve got it on low so the chard is not gonna break out too too much and I’ll just put the lid on here.

So I’ve got some leaf lettuce just slightly dressed up with the extra dressing for the lentils. I just tasted my lentils to make sure they’ve absorbed enough flavor. It taste spectacular and I’m just going to spoon some of that over the lettuce. How beautiful that is!

And the finishing touch, a little bit of our sunflower seed crumble, just sprinkle a little bit on top. Nuts are not the greatest combination to have with lentils of you put too much but if you’re just gonna sprinkle a few on, it should go down very nicely, taste amazing and it looks beautiful.

Enjoy your red wine lentil salad!