substituting lentils for meat - how do you do it?

[mousymouse]

do you just bang them in at the end? sautée them with the onions at the start?
will they stay hard when using stock as liquid?

I have decided that we eat too much meat and try to reduce whilst not giving my carnivores too much of a shock...

I don't use them as a substitute but as a food in their own right. If a tin, you can bung them in at the end. Otherwise, cook them in water or stock or tinned tomatoes or passata or something.

If you cook from dried ones, just use water no salt or stock, they will stay hard otherwise. Once they are cooked or tinned just dumped them at the end of your reciepe.
If you want better iron absorption and complete set of animo acids you should use pulses combined with cereals. (dahl and rice, red beans and tortillas, soy and rice....)

If you're talking about replacing minced beef in a cottage pie/bolognese type dish then remember that lentils increase to roughtly 2.5 x their size when cooked and that they need to be able to soak up enough fluid to do this.

So replace 8oz minced beef in a dish with about 3oz red or green lentils and add about 10floz of extra water. Green lentils take 20 - 30 minutes to soften. Red lentils take about half that time.