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With commercially grown lentil crops, care must be taken in harvesting the lentil crop. Because the plant is very short (20 to 40 cm tall), the swather (cutting blades) must be positioned as low to the ground as possible. Once cut, the lentil plants normally are ready to be threshed about one week after cutting.
Types of Lentils
As mentioned above, there are many varieties of lentil grown and eaten throughout the world, but the three most common types used in cooking are brown, red and green.
Preparing Lentils for cooking
One advantage of lentils over other legumes is that they do not require soaking. You can soak them for a few hours if you wish and this will reduce the cooking time by about half.
Before cooking with lentils it is advisable to rinse them in cold water and pick through them for any little stones which may be present. When cooking lentils by themselves, in preparation for adding to a recipe or as an accompaniment, use 3 times the amount of water to lentils and avoid cooking with anything acidic, such as vinegar, as that retards the cooking process. It is possible to substitute one type of lentil for another although you may need to adjust the cooking time. Cookings times for the main three types of lentils are:-
Brown Lentils - 35 minutes Red Lentils - 10-15 minutes Puy (green) Lentils - 20 minutes
Lentils can be frozen but make sure you only partially cook them so that when they are defrosted and added to a recipe they retain some texture.
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