You don’t have to be vegetarian to love pulses! Pulses are the seeds of plant family called legumes, usually dried before being cooked. They come in all shapes and shades of beans, various coloured peas, lentils, chickpeas, soybeans and peanuts.
We have always been on to a good thing in Britain eating baked beans on toast! We’re becoming more sophisticated now and expanding the repertoire to chickpeas and lentils, with a boost to our diet because pulses are nutritional bombs of goodness. They are rich in protein, a great source of fibre and can be turned into healthy, unsaturated fats: peanut butter and groundnut oil.
And it’s very easy to turn them into brilliant dishes. Most of them come in tins, already cooked which makes for a completely easy-peasy (pun intended) dinner or lunch. Though it’s worth making an effort and cook them from dried – especially on a budget.
Mejadra is the Middle Eastern comfort food. It’s a dish of lentils, onions and either bulgur wheat or, more commonly, rice. You might not believe that such a simple dish would taste so good but it sure does. Use crispy fried onions and ready-cooked lentils for a speedy version of it.
Rice and lentil mejadra
RECIPE
If you are on a budget, there’s no question you should cook your lentils from dry. And regardless of the cost, they just taste so much nicer. They don’t need soaking and become tender in just 20 minutes. Perfect to be spiced up and covered with molten cheese.
Spicy cheesy lentil bake
RECIPE
Chickpeas are not just for hummus. Drain a couple of (organic! certainly worth it to pay 30p more per tin) tins, tuck cherry tomatoes and chunks of feta cheese amongst them and bake. Such a gorgeous dish!
Tomato and chickpea tray bake
RECIPE
Another way with chickpeas is to turn them beautifully crispy, with Parmesan, and spice them up as hot as you like with chilli and paprika. With roasted red peppers and dry fried mushrooms, they deliver heaps of fibre as well as protein.
Crispy roasted chickpeas
RECIPE
Butter beans are the head honchos of bean family: fat, sizeable and deliciously creamy. Cook them from dry for a budget dinner or splash on a jar of ready-cooked ones. And you can swap chorizo for any other smoked pork sausage you fancy.
Butter beans and chorizo
RECIPE
Cassoulet was undoubtedly the best outcome of the Hundred Years’ War. The dish was invented in the Languedoc city of Castelnaudry, during the English siege. Apart from having medieval roots, it’s also proof that eating lots of duck fat aids longevity and good health!
Beans go with sweet potatoes like cheese with toast! Especially that this dish has cheese on top as well. Possibly the nicest version of a baked potato, using sweet ones for the base and spiced, tinned black beans for the topping.
Sweet potatoes with black beans
RECIPE
The classic, with added bacon: who could resist baked beans with bacon, homemade from scratch? It’s a riff on Boston baked beans, and it can easily be put on toast if you’re of that disposition.
Chilli is the perfect vehicle for beans, unless you’re from Texas. I’m not, and for me chilli is about beans as much as meat. Unless it’s vegetarian (see below). This recipe is for pork chilli, arguably as delicious if not better than beef.
Pork and red bean chilli
RECIPE
You won’t miss meat if you season your beans generously yet judiciously, and garnish the chilli with quick pickled onions. It will be nicer with beans cooked from scratch but for a weeknight opening a couple of tins is certainly allowed.
Also, peanuts
A couple of bonus recipes in this collection, just to remind everyone that peanuts are not nuts but pulses. The best use of peanut butter, in my view, is in the bang bang sauce for the eponymous chicken dish.
And the best method of bulking out your dinner with extra protein is adding chopped peanuts, like in kung pao chicken recipe.