Serious Eats: Recipes
Dinner Tonight: Warm Sausage and Lentil Salad
I've become rather enamored of lentils lately. They're cheap, versatile, and more nutritious than carbohydrates like rice and pasta (lentils are a legume, like beans). They're a go-to ingredient when you want to stretch a meal a bit further.
Lentils and sausage are a classic combination, often as a stew, probably because it's such an affordable way to serve a lot of people. The sausage becomes a seasoning, rather than the main event.
This recipe, from Stéphane Reynaud's Pork & Sons (previously a "Cook the Book" on Serious Eats), simmers the sausages in the same pot as the lentils so the flavors and fats infuse. The earthy lentils are then tossed with a balsamic-based vinaigrette that's fortified with a little bacon (which is never a bad thing), then topped with the sausage. The original recipe was more complicated and called for walnut oil, but I simplified, replacing it with olive oil, and was happy with the results.
Warm Sausage and Lentil Salad
About the author: Blake Royer lives in Brooklyn and spends most of his free time cooking and writing about it here at Serious Eats and on The Paupered Chef. From 9 to 5 weekdays, he works as an assistant book editor in Manhattan.