2024-08-13 - Lunch Prep: Lentils-Sausages

Very classic French quickly-fixed meal: lentilles-saucisses. It's pretty heavy, but lentils are good for you. It's actually by making this dish a couple of times that I got reunited with lentils, which I had a hard time to appreciate, and hated as kid.

The quantities here are for 5 portions (a work week), each of about 700kcal.

That's a big meal, but the goal is to not snack at all during the day. And my breakfast is only coffee.

Compared to other recipes you can find, I have a heavy hand on carrots. Some additional vegetables are not unwanted in such a dish. And it's a cheap one.

You could make more at once, but 1 pound of lentils is going to make A LOT of lentils, in term of volume. Be ready for that.

Ingredients

5 sausages
5 slices of bacon (about 1/6 of linked pack)
1 lbs of dry lentils
1 big onion
1 lbs of carrots

Optional seasoning:

couple of garlic cloves
a tablespoon of better than bouillon/a cube of bouillon
couple of bay leaves
other herbs (from other recipes, not really necessary): thyme, parsley

Step

[To be completed when done and tried with a few variants.]

Dice the bacon, onion and carrots

Put the bacon in the bottom of a big pot to get some grease out

Brown the onions first for a couple of minutes, then carrots in it

Add the lentils and cover everything with water, slow cook for about 30 minutes

Add any seasoning (bouillon and herbs) in the water

Cut sausages in big slices, and add them for about 20 minutes

Add salt and pepper about 5 minutes before the end

Variants

To try:

less carrots: is it actually better with less?
a branch of celery: could add a touch of freshness
remove bacon entirely
cook sausages first

Details

----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Item       | Product | qty  | kcal | kcal (u) | price  | price (u) |
----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Sausages   | Link[1] | 5    | 1440 |      288 | $ 3.75 |     $ .75 |
| Bacon      | Link[2] | 5    | 540  |      108 | $ 3.17 |     $ .63 |
| Lentils    | Link[3] | 1lbs | 1430 |      286 | $ 1.92 |     $ .39 |
| Onions     |         | 1    | 60   |       12 | $ 1    |     $ .2  |
| Carrots    |         | 1lbs | 190  |       38 | $ 1    |     $ .2  |
----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Total      |                | 3660 |      732 | $10.84 |     $2.17 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Regarding calories, we are a little above 700kcal... We could cut some of the bacon, but it won't make a big difference. 1 sausage per meal seems reasonable. It would make sense to reduce the amount of lentils to reduce calories here, but it would be less filling, and I don't want to deal with a fifth of an opened lentils bag.

To be on the lower end of calories for lunch, I'd recommend keeping the recipe and make 7 meals out of it, that a roughly 500kcal lunch per day.

Money wise, it's fantastic. $2.17 a meal is hard to beat unless it's pasta with nothing. $10 for the week, that's less than a fast food these days, think about that.

Photos