I bought some dry lentils AGES ago and kept saying to myself “I’m going to make Lentil Chili tomorrow” every time I opened the cabinet.
the first “Tomorrow” was about two months ago. And “tomorrow” was finally yesterday! whew. Now that I have lost my Lentil V-Card, I will be making it more often. Lentils are a fantastic little wonder that are very versatile.
Now, I finally decided to make this lentil chili but couldn’t come up with a recipe. I saw so many versions online but really was craving the lentil chili that hale and hearty makes. YUM. I only had one type of lentil verses their 3 diff types… but I figured I can take my regular recipe for chili and just use lentils instead of meat… plus more cooking water.
I started out with a bag of lentils. I rinsed them really well and picked out the undesirables. I let them chill out in the colander while I prepped the onion and garlic. I chopped an medium red onion and minced one garlic clove. My chili’s are preferred with more onion than garlic. Garlic tends to make tomato based dishes, in my opinion, taste like pasta sauce… so more onion please! I took a BIG pot and added a lil olive oil to it and set the heat to med-hi. Toss in the onion and garlic and saute for about 2 minutes. I added in my lentils and tossed them around a bit to get the oniony flavor going on.
I then poured 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes in the big pot, followed by 2 chicken flavored bouillon cubes plus 2 cups of water.

I decided to add 4 more cups of water throughout the cooking process. Those lentils are absorbent! I also added chili powder, cumin, some red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. I truly didn’t think this out because I ran out of chili powder mid pour… so i upped the red pepper flakes and ran out of cumin too. I gave it a quick taste and it is a cross between tomato lentil soup and lentil chili… two things that I really like so I thought “not bad”.

I washed and pierced a yukon gold potato and nuked it for 4 minutes.
When it was done, I carefully sliced it open and removed a green part-gross! I was left with half a potato. the chili took about 45 minutes to fully cook and after a lot of tasting and improvising I ended up with something tasty.
Its a Lentil chili cheese potato. The lentils were seasoned deliciously. I am definitely going to be making this again.
The final result was an empty bowl…
Then my darling boyfriend midway through his chili bowl…
“hey…this doesn’t have any meat in it?”
Got him again!!!