Ethopian-style Spiced Lentils Recipe

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This lentil dish is packed with layers of flavour and is great for a weeknight meal. It requires minimal effort with a large reward, and is a great warming dish on a colder evening.

Ingredients Serves: 4

3 tbsp vegetable oil
2 red onions, finely minced in a blender (180g)
10g garlic (2 fat cloves)
10g ginger
75g tomato puree
3.5 tsp berbere spice (divided)
2 tsp kosher salt (if using fine sea salt, reduce the amount to 1 1/2tsp )
300g red lentils, rinsed
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
Lemon wedges and cooked long-grain rice to serve

Method

Heat the oil in a medium-sized saucepan. Add the minced onion, and stir over a medium heat for 10 minutes, until soft.
Puree together the ginger and garlic, and add to the pan with onions. Stir in the tomato puree and 3 tsp berbere spice. Cook over low to medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring frequently.
Add 1 litre of water and bring to the boil. Stir in the salt and lentils. Simmer gently for 10 minutes.
Add 1/2 tsp more of the berbere spice, as well as 1/2 tsp ground black pepper. Simmer for a further 5 minutes.
Serve with plenty of cooked long-grain rice and a squeeze of lemon juice.

About the author

Nicola Lando is the co-founder and CEO of Sous Chef, where she has spent more than a decade sourcing, tasting and selecting specialist ingredients, cookware and tableware from producers around the world.

She trained at Leiths and later completed a stage at a Michelin-starred London restaurant, experiences that helped shape Sous Chef’s original mission: to give home cooks access to the same exceptional ingredients used by professional chefs.

Today, Nicola leads much of Sous Chef’s product sourcing and ingredient selection, working directly with producers and travelling internationally to food fairs, farms, mills and manufacturers. She tastes thousands of products each year and has built deep expertise across storecupboard ingredients, olive oil, condiments, spices, preserved foods and specialist cooking ingredients.

She holds an olive oil sommelier certification from ESAO in Spain, Imperial Executive Education’s Certificate in Nutrition for Health: Evidence-Based Tools and Strategies certificate; as well as studying Food Safety and Control at University of Greenwich.

Nicola also writes recipes and ingredient guides for Sous Chef, combining practical cooking experience with first-hand knowledge from producers, suppliers and specialist food makers. Her work focuses on helping cooks understand how to choose better ingredients, use them well, and get more flavour from their cooking.