I originally stole this recipe from Tasty.Com and modified it a bit to suit our tastes and requirements. We have a 3.5 litre slow cooker and the recipe below fits it perfectly. I make up a batch of this and then freeze it in 450g – 500g portions, Linda doesn’t like it but I love it, and it is perfect for a Sunday night tea when you don’t feel like mucking around. I like it because it uses a variety of legumes (black beans, red beans, chick peas and red lentils). I also use our home produced/preserved diced tomatoes and our own onions and garlic. The result is wonderfully………. tasty, especially when served with a few schlogs of Greek yoghurt mixed through just prior to consumption and a topping of grated cheese.
We cook (and occasionally grow) our own legumes so the black and red kidney beans and the chickpeas are soaked overnight, then boiled up the next day and left in the stored heat cooker for a few hours, drained and then frozen in 250gm portions. As it works out, 250g of cooked legume is about as much as you get in a 420g can (the rest being expensive water), so if you don’t want to process your own, one can of each will do. For the tomato paste, I generally buy in a glass jar of the stuff and freeze it in an ice cube tray, then empty the tray into a container and store the frozen tomato paste cubes in the freezer until needed. Two of the cubes of tomato paste are roughly equivalent to one quarter of a cup.
1 tablespoon oil
1 onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
250g black beans
250g kidney beans
250g chickpeas
250g corn kernels (1 x 420g can, drained) or you can cut the kernels from fresh corn
420g diced tomato (1 x can) or 1 x 400gm jar of your own if you are so minded
¼ cup tomato paste (55 g)
2 tablespoons cumin
1 teaspoon paprika
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon ground coriander
4 cups vegetable stock (I use 2 Massel chicken stock cubes in 1 litre of water, they have no animal content)
¾ cup lentils (125 g)
Method
1. fry up the onion and garlic in the oil and add to the slow cooker
2. add the beans, chickpeas, corn, tomato and tomato paste
3. sprinkle the spices on top
4. add the stock and lentils, stir to distribute everything
5. Cook on high for 4 hours or on low for 6.
6. If you are that way inclined (and I am) you can toss in a couple of teaspoons of cornflour suspended in a small amount of water and stir around to thicken it up a bit.
As mentioned above, stir some Greek yoghurt through any portions you are going to eat (and freeze the stuff not yoghurted) top with grated cheese of your choice. You will not find a tastier quick, easy and high protein vego meal, even if the resulting flatulence is almost life threatening!
