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Hello!
Today we’re talking about lentils, which I (and hopefully many of you!) love.
Lentils are brilliant cooked with steam, retaining their texture and shape in a way boiling doesn’t always allow for. I’m going to walk you through a couple of ways to cook them in your steam oven, and share my favorite lentil recipes, including a new-to-the-site one for lentil dahl, using little red lentils. I’ve been making this dahl for years and I almost always have some individually packed in the freezer, ready for quick workday lunches.
Enjoy reading and cooking, see you in a couple of weeks.
Emily x
New to Learn: How To Cook Lentils in a Steam Oven
I worked out how to cook lentils in a steam oven years ago, but I’ve never gone through the process of how I do it here! It’s so simple and the results are much nicer than boiling them in a pot, so I want you to know about it.
New to Cook: Red Lentil Dahl
This is the simplest lentil dahl recipe I know of, and the one I make most often. It’s comforting and gentle and is equally at home as the star of dinner with a little rice, or as a side dish to a Indian meat or vegetable main.
Using red lentils means your dahl will be quite smooth and soft in texture. Fresh ginger perfumes the dahl and a ‘temper’ of oil and spices that gets added after cooking adds a completely different, brighter element than if you add the spices before cooking.
I hope you love this dahl recipe as much as I do. It’s a freezer staple here, ready to heat in my steam oven and eat for lunch whenever I can’t think of what to eat, or if I feel the need for extra nourishment.
The Season Flip
Lentils for all times of year…
Southern Hemisphere
I cannot overstate my love for this easy and deeply delicious soup. If you’ve never made it, I hope reminding you of its existence means you’ll be making it this week!
Northern Hemisphere
I originally created this as a Christmastime recipe, because that’s summer here. If you’re in peak hot weather, it’s a great hearty but not too heavy meal, and involves minimal use of the oven apart from steaming grains and lentils (you could even use lentils from a can if it’s really too hot to cook).
A Thing I'm Loving
My favorite thermometer company, Thermoworks, sent a Christmas in July sale email. Although I’m stocked with thermometers, I opened it anyway, and I’m glad I did. Their silicone hot pad/trivet was on sale and it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. Maybe you’ll like them too?
I’ve used quilted fabric potholders for years, but every now and then I burn myself taking a hot, dripping pan out of my steam oven, as the water soaks through the fabric easily. I’ve tried a few silicone replacements but they were always either too smooth and slippery or too thick so I couldn’t grab onto handles and edges easily. I love the design of the Thermoworks ones, and even more so that they’re round so I can use them as a neat little trivet on the table when we serve straight out of saucepans (don’t judge, dinners with 3 kids are a trial that sometimes requires serving straight from the saucepan to get through).
I also chucked a discounted probe spool into my order; they’re made for thermometer probes but I’m hoping it’ll also fit my oven’s meat probe neatly so I can stick it onto the fridge right next to the oven. Yet to try it, but I’ll report back if it’s worthwhile!
*A Thing I’m Loving sometimes includes affiliate links, but only ever for products I actually use and enjoy.
Ask Me Anything (AMA)
Here’s your opportunity to ask me anything you like related to combi steam cooking!
I really encourage you to submit questions, and will do my best to answer as many as possible. I may not be able to get to every single question, but I carefully curate ones which are relevant and represent a variety of topics. We all learn from each other, and I often learn new things based on questions from all of you!
If you have an AMA question, please email it to [email protected]. Include the phrase INSIDERS AMA in the subject line so I can collate and read all your submissions.
From Jocelyn
Q: With my combi steam oven ‘Midea’ brand the steam assist has low, medium and high settings but the lowest temperature available is 150°C. How do I adjust for recipes using 100°C?
A: You won’t be able to replicate straight-steam (100°C) dishes if you have a steam-assisted oven rather than a fully featured combi steam, because (as you’ve found), the steam settings don’t go that low. You’re better off making steamed dishes using a different steaming method (think stovetop steamer basket or electric standalone steamer). Even if you could get the temperature down to 100°C, I suspect your high steam setting won’t give you 100% humidity.
For combi steam recipes where the temperature isn’t much lower than your minimum (for example, a slow roasted meat dish that calls for 130 or 140°C), you can go ahead and use your 150°C minimum, and cook the dish for less time.
From Sarah
Q: How do I decrystallise a jar of raw honey in the steam oven while retaining flavour and quality (i.e. without overheating it and destroying the beneficial nutrients and enzymes)? I generally use 1kg jars of raw honey.
A: Great question, I just did this over the weekend, in fact! If you want to retain as many nutrients as possible, you shouldn’t heat honey past 110°F/43°C, and even at that temperature you’ll lose some of the antibacterial properties and enzymes from the honey. I put a jar (or, better, the amount that I want to use that day) into my steam oven at 95°F/35°C and let it warm slowly. That seems to be hot enough to get rid of the crystals most of the time, but it will take ages if you do an entire large jar.
From Sarah (2 questions! But they’re both great so I wanted to address both)
Q: Many steam ovens I’ve seen have highly polished stainless steel surfaces in the cavity. I’ve accidentally created small scratches in mine from using one of the two-sided kitchen sponges. Do you know of a way to remove or reduce the scratches?
A: Once the scratches are in the stainless steel, I’m afraid you may be stuck with them. They won’t impact the working of your oven, though. I have known someone to gently rub around the entire surface with said two-sided sponge to ‘even up’ the scratches of their stainless oven interior and make it less obvious, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it as a solution! There are a few stainless steel polishing products on the market which purport to reduce the appearance of scratches, but as soon as you add humidity to your oven you’re going to steam that off, and likely introduce harmful chemicals into your food. If it were me I’d let myself be annoyed about the scratches, then chalk it up to a mistake and try not to think about it any more!