Olivia Piepmeier

Sloppy Lentils

← Recipes

Saturday, March 9, 2024
Categories: pantry main beans veggies
A watercolor illustraton of sloppy lentils - a bun with some red and green stuff spilling out the sides.

inspired by Food52 Vegan, pg. 97

Ingredients

  • Some olive oil
  • 1 onion or more, chopped small-ish
  • 1 green or red bell pepper, seeded and chopped (ends up being around a cup but its flexible)
  • At least 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 2 tsp chili powder
  • 1 tsp dry mustard
  • 1 tsp smoked paprika
  • 1 cup of cooked lentils
  • 14.5 oz. can of crushed tomatoes (or half a big can of whole tomatoes + juice or just a few tomatoes that you crush yourself)
  • 3 tbsp tomato paste
  • 1 tbsp brown sugar or maple syrup
  • 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
  • balsamic vinegar, to taste
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp pepper
  • 1/2 c. veggie broth or white wine, until desired texture
  • buns (toasted)
  • Mustard and pickled red onions, to top

Directions

  1. Heat the oil in a in large pot over medium.
  2. Add onion and bell pepper and sauté until tender and the onions are getting translucent. Maybe 8 minutes?
  3. Add garlic, chili powder, dry mustard, and paprika and sauté until fragrant, around 1-2 mins.
  4. Stir in lentils, tomatoes, paste, sugar, vinegar, salt, and pepper.
  5. Cook, stirring occasionally, until everything is hot, then decrease to medium-low.
  6. Add broth/wine to prevent sticking and to achieve the consistency you want.
  7. Cook until as thick as you want - probably 15-20 mins.
  8. In this house we top each pile of slop with some pickled red onions and mustard. I bet slaw would be good or anything pickled. Do what you want - it’s your sandwich!

Thoughts

There’s part of me that despises vegan versions of not-vegan things. Whole, plant-based foods can be good because good food is good, why make it act like something else? BUT, this is really good and is essentially vegan sloppy joes. In an alternate reality where I never had “true” sloppy joes, and was given this, I’d be like “yes, what a great way to eat some lentils!”

I consider this a pantry meal. While it is a lovely way to use bell pepper and fresh onions in the summer…chopped peppers freeze wonderfully and onions are storage veggies (that also freeze well). You can have this any time of year and still be eating locally AF. This is also very flexible in terms of amounts of things. You could very easily double or triple this, or maybe have more peppers and onions and less lentils etc. etc.