French Lentils With Garlic and Thyme

Ingredients

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• 3 Tbsp vegetable broth 🛒
• 1 Onion
• 2 clove Garlic
• 1 Carrots
• 2¼ cup French Lentils
• 1 tsp Thyme
• 3 Bay Leaf
• 1 Tbsp Salt
• 2 sticks Celery

Method

1. Place a large saucepan over medium heat and add vegetable broth.
2. When hot, add chopped vegetables and sauté until softened, 5 to 10 minutes.
3. Add 6 cups water, lentils, thyme, bay leaves and salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a fast simmer.
4. Simmer lentils until they are tender and have absorbed most of the water, 20 to 25 minutes.
5. If necessary, drain any excess water after lentils have cooked.
6. Serve immediately, or allow them to cool and reheat later.
7. For a fuller taste, use some chicken stock and reduce the water by the same amount.

About the ingredients

vegetable broth

A salt-free, all-purpose vegetable broth. Onion, carrots, celery, garlic, tomatoes, mushrooms, kombu, parsley.

Onion Allium cepa

Bulb vegetable, eaten raw or cooked. Whole minimally-processed plant food; 'organic' refers to cultivation only. WFPB-canonical.

Garlic Allium sativum

Garlic itself is canonical, but extract denotes a concentrated/isolated derivative outside the whole-food canon. Marketed as natural/healthy supplement, hence mistaken-as-WFPB flag.

Carrots Daucus carota

Whole taproot, eaten raw or cooked. Orange domesticated form is the familiar one; heirloom landraces range purple to white.

French Lentils Lens culinaris

Common whole brown lentils — small dried legume seeds that cook quickly without soaking, holding shape for stews and dals. High in protein, fiber, folate, and iron. Whole legume — WFPB canonical.

Thyme Thymus vulgaris

Fresh or dried leaf+tender stem. Bare name is the herb, not the distilled essential oil.

Bay Leaf Laurus nobilis

Bay leaf: aromatic leaf of the laurel tree Laurus nobilis, native to the Mediterranean and prized since antiquity (Greek/Roman symbolism). Used whole, dried or fresh, to infuse dishes then removed. Contains essential oils (eucalyptol). A whole dried herb/leaf. Canonical WFPB.

Salt NaCl

Crystalline sodium chloride, harvested by evaporating seawater or mining rock-salt deposits. Used as seasoning and preservative since antiquity—central to trade and food economies for millennia. A mineral, not a plant food, and a sodium isolate; noncanonical to WFPB.

Celery Apium graveolens

Crisp, fibrous leaf stalks (petioles) of Apium graveolens, eaten raw or cooked. Very low caloric density, high water and fiber; provides vitamin K, folate, potassium. Whole, intact vegetable, fully canonical to WFPB.