Homemade Lentil Crisps

Ah, the irony: two foodies with a food blog have the challenge of feeding a picky eater.  It is a daily struggle and hopefully a brief phase.  We often joke that the minute he shows an actual interest in food, we're taking him on a food tour.  Can't wait! 

 
But in the meantime, two of his favorite foods are Trader Joe's Veggie Sticks (apparently very popular with all toddlers, according to a cashier) and Simply 7 Lentil Chips (called Simply 7 because they consist of only 7 natural ingredients, which makes us feel slightly less guilty about him consuming so many of them).  In an effort to satisfy his apparent "crunch" obsession with something homemade, Mel tracked down a recipe for lentil crisps and gave it a whirl.

The recipe is featured on a blog, and over the years we've learned that sometimes our links to other blogs stop working and we are left without a recipe to reference.  So with full credit to One Lil' Vegan, here is the recipe cut and pasted just in case she decides to stop blogging.  

One Lil' Vegan's Lentil Crisps

• 2 cups red lentils (they cook the fastest)
• 2 cups veggie broth
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup brown rice flour
• 2 tsp smoked roasted garlic (or smoked paprika, oregano, thyme, basil, rosemary, all of the above… You get the idea – build your own signature cracker by simply substituting your own spice. Be sure to post your favourite mix!)
• 0.5 tsp sea salt
• 1/4 cup cold-pressed olive oil

"Combine the lentils, veggie broth and water in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring it to a boil, then turn the heat down and simmer until the lentils are soft (about 10-15 minutes). Drain most of the liquid off and transfer to a bowl. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.

Add the rice flour (or you can use regular unbleached flour), smoked roasted garlic, sea salt and olive oil. Stir to combine.  If you have a Silpat (or some other silicone mat for your pan), use it. Otherwise, grease your baking sheet up so that the crackers don’t stick. The mixture will be quite wet. If you want to use a pasta press, I’d add another cup or so of flour, but we’re doing it the quick and easy way here, so wet mixture it is! Pour it onto the baking sheet and spread it as thinly as possible, unless you want a chunky cracker. You can either do one big cracker and break it into bits later (easy) or you can try to make little round crackers by carefully spooning the mixture onto the sheet one-by-one (harder but likely prettier).

Toss it into the oven for about 10-15 minutes, keeping an eye on it since the timing really is variable depending on the thickness of the cracker and whether you’ve opted for lil’ bitty crackers or the cracker-sheet. Once you start seeing a golden-brown edging, take the baking sheet out and let it rest. Only start breaking the sheet-‘o-cracker into cracker-sized bits once it’s cool. And then, you’re done!"

For our first try with this recipe, we decided to use beef broth to boost the nutrition factor for Mr. I Hate New Foods.  The lentils soaked up the liquid pretty quickly, so we wound up adding a little more to give them more cooking time.  We skipped the roasted garlic, but will consider adding some other favorite spices to the mix once we see if these are actually a hit. 

 

We mushed the lentils just a bit with a potato masher before mixing in the flour and oil.  Then we spread everything in a thin layer on a greased baking sheet.

Apparently we didn't spread the mix thin enough because it took much longer to bake to a true crunchy state.  We wound up leaving it in the oven for about 40 minutes.  You can kind of tell the edges got nice and brown and the top was very crispy.

Unfortunately, they were a bit too thick to be crisp all the way through.  The flavor was great, so we won't change anything there.  But for the next batch we'll definitely spread it even thinner across the baking sheet.


In the meantime, we're thinking a quick fix will be to cut these thick pieces into thin strips and toast them to make veggie stick look-alikes.  Will keep you posted whether that solution is a hit with the toddler patron of our kitchen.