A common misconception about lentils and pulses is that they are one and the same thing.

Lentils are a type of pulses with lens shaped seeds whereas pulses are the edible seeds of legumes. Lentils include red lentils, green lentils, puy lentils while pulses include dried peas, chick peas, dried beans. There are many ways to use lentils and pulses in your cooking. Simple preparation may include just boiling the lentils. One can also experiment by adding other flavors or herbs when you are bored of eating same way.

Arzooman Irani, Executive Chef, The Hilton, Jaipur avers, “during the Covid-19 Lockdown people were afraid to eat non vegetarian food and more importantly it was not available. As lentils and pulses are freely available and are considered as poor man’s food in our country they can be used as a quick fix for a protein substitute. In case one is falling short of a certain vegetable, one can easily add a lentil to increase the quantity like you can add chana daal to snake gourd to give it consistency and volume.”

Read the full story that first appeared in The Free Press Journal dated June 7. 2020 here: