Every recipe calling for lentils that I’ve ever seen calls for, as step 1, sorting through your dried lentils to make sure there aren’t any stones. But I must admit that I’ve never yet found any stones in my lentils, either in the sifting or the eating.
Granted, I don’t eat a lot of lentils. But are stones in lentils really a common problem? Or were they a common problem at one time, but less common now?
And why lentils? Am I just missing the commandments to sort through dried peas or pinto beans, or are lentils especially stone-prone?
I’ve found stones or lumps of dried dirt a couple of times. It was always in lentils taken from a bulk bin, though. I think lentils are considered more “stone-prone” because of their shape, color and size. A stone in a pile of beans would be pretty obvious.
I’ve not found any stones in my dried legumes lately, but it’s a good practice to sift through them before the cooking process. IIRC, there can be the occasional stone or other foreign objects that pass through the packaging process that just happens to get picked up in harvesting. Same goes for rice, too.
For what it’s worth, I do always sift through my lentils, faithfully following the recipe. I’ve never found a stone, and I’ve used both prepackaged and bulk-bin lentils.
But like I said, I don’t use a lot of lentils, so I’ve probably just been lucky.
Well, you might think stones would be obvious but they aren’t. I used to find a few in every bag, and didn’t see them until I sorted. I still occasionally find stones in beans, but not as often as before. I think many processors may have switched to an optical sorting system.
But the other reason to sort your beans is to get rid of bad beans: rotted, worm eaten, even broken ones. There are enough beans that you can afford to throw out the handful that aren’t perfect. One really bad bean can ruin a whole pot of pintos or limas. Bad beans are more often found in some varieties of beans than others… I seem to find more bad pintos than any other.
'Nother thing is that, depending what brand you get, you should probably rinse your legumes before cooking them. Sometimes they aren’t prewashed. Just chuck them in a wire sieve and run water over them while quickly picking through them for stones.
Many recipes ask to check for rocks in any type of beans and sometimes rice. The fun ones say check for bugs too. I did find some bugs in imported rice. Ew.
Dunno about lentils, but I have found stones and lumps of dirt in pinto beans many times. (Not as often in the recent past, though.) Momma taught us always to “look” the beans before washing and cooking them.
Every few months I’ll buy 10-12 small bags of different beans and lentils from the supermarket. Eventually, they all get mixed together and then divided into individual bags to be used to make soup later on.
I am constantly finding stones, lumps of dirt, rotten beans, gnarly beans, etc.
I started slowly dumping each bag onto a dinner plate, just enough to cover the plate with a layer of beans. You can tell from the “plink” sound if you have something other than a bean or lentil. I’ll then visually inspect the plate of beans before dumping it in a big spaghetti pot for mixing.
So far, I’ve managed to catch all non-bean debris.
It really depends on where you live and how you get your lentils. It’s funny, my SO has started buying lentils from the grocery store instead of the Indian store. Why? Indian store lentils always have stones. Do they ship them in directly from the Old Country? Are they F.O.B. lentils? (Fresh Off the Boat) I dunno. But the grocery store lentils, presumably machine-packed, almost never have stones.
I once almost broke a tooth on a rock in some beans at Qdoba - I guess the big companies don’t pick their beans!
I have sometimes found a rock in lentils, more often in black beans - once I had a bag of dried black beans (Publix store brand) that had tons of gross stuff in it - weird carbonized things, so I called to let them know they might have a problem with their equipment or something and I got a very concerned call back from a factory floor manager who quizzed me intensely on exactly what it was. I was really impressed (although I didn’t take the offer to refund me my money - come on, what is it, two bucks?)
I find stones in almost every bag of dried pintos and black beans that I buy. These are normal grocery-store brands, nothing fancy.
Mr. Athena once scoffed at me for sorting through dried beans, maintaining that his father the Texan Cook never sorted through beans. I turned around to him and showed him the 4-5 stones I had already found, and he changed his tune to “maybe Dad did sort his beans and I never noticed.”
I’ve found stones in lentils, split peas, probably other dried beans. They’re usually small, easy to spot in the peas, but not that hard in the lentils either. I’d say the brand makes a difference.
Interesting. I’ve never sorted for stones in my beans or lentils and I’ve never had issues. I just thought that was some sort of outdated instruction that doesn’t apply anymore. Maybe they just all sink to the bottom of the pot and I never get to them? Or I’m lucky.