Meal Prep Lentil Salad | Feel Good Food | Food52 + Planet Oat

Food52’s Feel Good Food, home cook Lydia Keating and chef Max Baroni stir up nutrient-packed dishes that remind us why we love to eat. This herby lentil salad is packed with texture, flavor, and fiber—perfect for meal prep, picnics, or a quick no-sad-desk-lunch moment. Tossed in a simple, punchy vinaigrette, it’s done in under 30 minutes. Shoutout to our partner @planetoat2948 for making it all happen. #f52partner

GET THE RECIPE:
Summery Lentil Salad: https://food52.com/recipes/best-summery-lentil-salad

MORE FROM LYDIA AND MAX:
https://food52.com/pages/feel-good-food

There’s like an Instagram called Ratemy Chives. And it basically just like rates people’s chive cutting. The account has come to your Instagram account and roasted me. People have like commented on my comments being like rate my chives. I rate my chives. Like this guy’s chives suck or something. I’m not afraid of rate my chives coming for me on. We’re not afraid of you. Rate my chives. Welcome to Feelgood Food where we make snacks, meals, and treats that taste good but also make you feel good. And today we are making a summery lentil salad. It’s got a bunch of beautiful vegetables in it. snap peas, carrots. It’s got a nice French vinegrett. Another amazing summer lunch dish. It’s something you would want to eat on a hot day when you’re trying to stay energetic, stay bright, still take advantage of the long summer day ahead. The first thing we’re going to do is toast our lentils. These lentils are already cleaned and washed, but um similar to like rice or a grain, they can sometimes be dirty or just like sand left on them. It’s always a good idea to just give them a quick rinse before you get started. But these are good to go. This is heating up. And you want to let it heat up for like a minute or so, 2 minutes. Just pour some oil in there. Just a little bit. You know, we’re just going to toast these lentils a bit. We’re just going to Maybe we throw the garlic in now, too. That we’re just going to smash. And don’t worry about taking the skin off cuz we won’t be eating the garlic. So, just throw that in there. Let it get a little toasty. That’s just going to be to infuse flavor into the lentils as they cook. Yeah. Just some like aromatics. And then we’re just going to add our lentils in there and give those a mix as well. And you can toast these for like two to three minutes until you kind of like hear that sizzle. And just keep moving them around so they don’t burn. It is time to add the three cups of water and officially get these lentils cooking. And while you’re mixing, I’m just going to salt it a little bit. You want it to absorb that salt for sure. So, and this is a decent amount of water, so don’t be afraid to get a few pinches in there. And lentils do take a lot of salt. Yeah. Now, this is going to cook for like 20 to 30 minutes. I like to cook my lentils in a little bit of extra water. I think that it’s always better to have more in there than less and so your lentils don’t dry up and then it kind of messes up the cooking process if you keep adding water. I like to go extra and then you can always strain your lentils out at the end, which is I think the best option and the best way to do it. Once the lentils come to a boil, we’ll turn the heat down to a simmer. We’re going to first make our vinegrett because the shallot is going to kind of like pickle slightly in the red wine vinegar. This, as Max said, is a very simple French inspired vinegrett. It’s really delicious, very bright. You can use it on a bunch of different types of salads, but it works really well with this lentil salad. Let’s start this quick pickle process. These are going to turn this really beautiful vibrant pink color, which I actually think is so pretty in the final salad. Dollop of Dijon. Always a wonderful addition to a salad dressing. We have some lemon going on in there. This is a very juicy lemon. Ooh, a little salt. This vinegrett works for truly most salads. If you just want a quick vinegrett to make at home with or without lentils, this is a good one. So, let’s put the vinegrett to the side and get started on the veggies. Wow, summer on a plate. I love sugar snap peas. We’re going to demo how to clean these snap peas. Start at the bottom of the snap pee and you peel up this first side. Well, that was I got a good one. Yeah, that was that one. And then you snip the top. You can use your honestly I use my nail, but you can also use a knife. You just crack the top and then you come down the back side and there you go. Cuz these stringy parts, it’s like pretty fibrous and unpleasant to eat. So, it just makes the eating experience of snap peas more pleasant, more enjoyable. Yeah. Now, we’re just going to slice our snap peas. [Music] And then, why don’t you start peeling the carrots? How about that? Here’s a peeler. You know, there was one guy that worked at the Horseman also named Max. He used to just snack on a carrot all day for all the time. Just a raw carrot. But then I only one over the course of the day. Just like every now and then, he like always had a carrot, you know? Well, you know how it makes your skin turn orange? It does. It happened to my aunt when she was a teenager. How many carrots would she eat? You have to eat a lot, but it literally This is Yeah, exactly. But then I think it starts to look like a really bad spray tan. We have been working hard today and I think it’s time we take a little coffee break. I agree. I’m a big afternoon coffee person. I need that extra boost to get myself through the day, but I can’t risk it weighing me down, especially if I have a workout or an afternoon run later. So, I use Planet Oat unsweetened original oat milk in my postrun coffee. It just feels lighter and I love that it’s unsweetened, zero g of sugar, and it tastes so creamy. Yeah, I love planted oat too, especially in our oatmeal. I make Lydia some oatmeal all the time before her morning run and I think it just works better for you, right? Yes, I have learned the hard way that dairy before a run doesn’t sit great. I love using Planet Oat in my oatmeal. It’s so nice knowing that I can still have that warm and comforting breakfast without it feeling heavy afterwards when I go and run. Especially in summer and into fall, it’s so nice not having to give up that extra creaminess just because I’m skipping dairy. That’s why I love Planet Oats lineup of oat milks. You can find Planet Oat unsweetened oat milk at your local grocery store or at planet oat.com/wwaretoy. Our lentils are done cooking now. There’s some liquid left in them, but that’s totally fine. I’m just going to dump them onto a sheet tray to get them in the fridge so they can start to cool a little bit so that they’re chilled for the salad. The next component of this salad are four different herbs. We have parsley here that’s already been picked. Dill that’s also already been picked. Chives and cilantro that hasn’t been picked because cilantro stems you can famously use. They’re really flavorful and delicious. We will chop the dill, cilantro, and parsley together. The chives are going to have their own show. I think herbs are especially in like spring summer, it’s the best time to be using a bunch of herbs. I mean, it just brightens everything up and you can’t I just don’t think you can go wrong. I think most recipes could use an herb. And in this case, a lot of herbs in this one. Okay, I think that looks pretty good. Yeah, toss them in there. Sheesh. Looks really good. That is super herby. That looks great. And then we’re just going to chop these chives. I don’t know if you guys know the channel Rate My Chives, but um I’ve been come for on that channel before because of my chive cutting. Wait, what do you mean? There’s like an Instagram called Rate My Chives and it basically just like rates people’s chive cutting because chives are like supposedly a very like take people take pride in their chive cutting. The account has come to your Instagram account and roasted. People have like commented on my comments being like rate my chives. I rate my chives like this guy’s chives suck or something. Oh, really? And then they’ll comment back and be like I don’t know like I don’t know. Sometimes they’ve been like no these are good. Rate my chives defends you. Yeah, at one time he did or they did but at one time I was purposely cutting them thick. Not thin. Uh, somebody rate my chives our tomato toast video for 52. I don’t know if you saw that. Oh, yeah. They were okay chives cutting. I was They weren’t my best, but this one is like I’m going for like a rough one here. They’re so bouncy. Chives are bouncy. It’s tough. Yeah, they are super bouncy. But then again, like, you know, I could be cutting these like micro thin, but I kind of like a chunkier chive in a salad. I think if you’re cutting them like paper thin, you they’re just going to get lost and be mushed. I kind of like to bite into a chive a little bit. I’m not afraid of rate my chives coming from me. We’re not afraid of you. Rate my chives. It’s a very pungent smelling salad. Mhm. Yeah, I can smell it from here. Very chy. We want to squeeze a little bit of a lemon in here just to keep the especially the carrots nice and vibrant. I kind of like the look of the salad at this stage without even the dressing or the lentils. Doesn’t look delicious. Yeah, about that. Lentil salad. Skip the lentils. The lentils are cool and they’re ready to be added to the rest of the vegetables and the herbs. And the salad is in its final phase of coming together. I’m just going to sweep them in here. This does look like a lot of lentils, so I don’t know if we need to use all of them. Okay. I think I might start with this amount. Mhm. And we’ll see where that gets us. And then we can always add more if we need. We’ll start with a little bit of a dry toss to check the amounts. And remember what I said about the shallots, that beautiful pink purple we’ll get. There it is. I’d say go with half and then we’ll see how we look. Okay. Cuz you never want like a soupy salad. This is a pretty hearty salad, so I don’t think it could get like really wet wet. Feel like hard vegetable salads are really trendy because of how well they keep in the fridge. I love a piece of arugula here and there, but it is nice to have a salad that you know won’t wilt within a couple hours. I’m going to go in with some pepper. Just a little bit more salt. Touch more of this. All right. And here’s our salad. [Music] Summer afternoon. Cool, refreshing, bright at the beach, at your house, wherever. In the city, if you need to cool off, this will cool you off. I didn’t ta do any of the tasting of seasoning. I’m really a lot of faith is in Max right now. I love that salad. M I think this is the best we’ve ever made it. Mhm. Amazing salad. That was delicious. That was delicious. Well done. Crushed it. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Feelgood Food. You can find this recipe at food552.com and we’ll see you next time. [Music]