Ina Garten Prefers This Variety Of Lentils For Her Soups

Ina Garten began her culinary career as the proprietor of a fancy food store in the high-rent Hamptons, so it's only natural that she's super-picky when it comes to choosing her ingredients. Her olive oil has to be Olio Santo, her butter must be from Cabot Creamery, and her lentils can only be French. (Naturellement! Quel horreur if she had to use basic brown ones.)

French lentils are known for having a slightly peppery taste, especially the ones grown in the Puy region. Garten enjoys them because of their texture, though. They are quite tiny — perhaps a third the size of the more standard brown or green lentils — but they are much firmer, and their extra-thick skin makes them more likely to keep their shape when simmered in a soup.

French lentils are good in salads as well as soups, since they hold together so nicely. They can also be used to replace ground meat when veganizing recipes like tacos or spaghetti Bolognese. They probably won't be your first choice, though, if you're making a dal or soup where you want the lentils to fall apart and result in a creamy mush.

Ina Garten may not use lentils as often as she does other vegetables such as potatoes and tomatoes, but she does have several recipes that make use of them — and yes, it's french green lentils in each and every one. Two of these are soups: Her lentil vegetable soup combines green lentils with carrots, celery, garlic, leeks, and onions in a tomato-based broth, while her lentil sausage soup uses those same ingredients with the addition of red wine vinegar and kielbasa. Both of these soups she sprinkles with Parmesan before eating — no specific brand required, but she'd probably pitch a fit if she caught you using the kind that comes in a shaker-topped cardboard tube. (Pre-grated Parmesan is one of the foods she refuses to have in her kitchen.)

Two other Garten lentil recipes aren't soups, but side dishes. Well, her stewed lentils and tomatoes are somewhat soup-adjacent because green lentils don't absorb much cooking liquid, and the recipe calls for a pint of chicken stock flavored with vinegar and curry powder. Her warm French lentils, however, are cooked in liquid and then drained. When you add in the diced carrot and the vinegar-dijon dressing, this dish could be considered a salad of sorts and is something you might serve over rice or alongside an entree of roast pork or chicken.