Green lentils substitutes

The ordinary supermarket lentil, and the closest thing to green lentils on the shelf. Same size, same 25 to 30 minute cook, same skins holding each lentil together. The difference is small and honest: brown lentils taste a touch earthier and less peppery, and they go from tender to falling apart about five minutes sooner, so a green-lentil salad made with brown lentils looks very slightly scruffier at the edges.

Best for

lentil salads, lentil loaf and veggie burgers, soups and stews, lentil bolognese

Start tasting at 20 minutes and drain the moment they are tender if you need them to stay distinct. Green and brown lentils are often sold from the same bin as brown-green lentils, so if you have one you effectively have the other.

Smaller, darker, mottled blue-green, and noticeably firmer. They hold their shape so well that they stay separate even if you overshoot the timer, which makes them better than green lentils in a salad and slightly worse in a soup where you wanted a bit of collapse to thicken the broth. Flavour is more peppery and mineral, less soft and earthy, so a plain dressed lentil salad tastes brighter and more grown-up.

Best for

lentil salads, lentils under fish or sausage, warm side dishes

Cook time is similar, roughly 25 minutes, but they will not overcook the way green lentils do. If your soup relied on lentils breaking down for body, mash a ladleful against the side of the pot.

Tiny, round, glossy black lentils that hold their shape as well as Puy lentils and taste a shade richer and more savoury. The real change is visual: your green lentil salad comes out looking like caviar, and any dressing or yoghurt on the plate turns faintly grey-purple. In a lentil loaf or a stew that nobody photographs, that costs you nothing.

Best for

lentil salads, grain bowls, stews, lentil loaf

Cook in plenty of water, 20 to 25 minutes, and drain rather than cooking dry so the colour rinses away instead of staining everything.

The fastest fix and a genuinely good one, because canned lentils are almost always brown or green. They are softer than lentils you cooked yourself and they taste faintly of the can until you rinse them well, but in a warm salad, a taco filling or a soup they are indistinguishable after a couple of minutes in the pan. They are already cooked, so add them near the end.

Best for

quick salads, soups and stews added at the end, taco and burrito fillings, lentil patties

Do not simmer them for twenty minutes or they will disintegrate. If the recipe expected dry lentils to absorb liquid, reduce the added liquid by roughly the same volume, or your soup will be thin.

Not a lentil, but it does the same structural job in a salad: chewy separate grains that hold a vinaigrette. The dish tastes nuttier and more like wheat, and it is starchier, so it feels more filling and less clean than a lentil salad. You also lose the earthiness that green lentils bring, so lean harder on mustard, lemon or vinegar in the dressing.

Best for

cold and warm salads, grain bowls, stuffing vegetables

Contains gluten, so it is not a swap in a gluten-free recipe. For that, use cooked brown rice or quinoa instead, and accept that quinoa is much softer.

This is the honest one: for anything where the lentils need to stay whole, there is no way to make split red lentils work. They have been skinned and split, so they dissolve. If soup is what you are making, that is fine and even nice, and your soup will be thicker, smoother, sweeter and orange-brown instead of studded with green lentils. If you were making a salad, a lentil loaf or a lentil bolognese, do not use them; go buy brown lentils or use canned.

Best for

thick pureed soups, dal, thickening a stew

They cook in 15 to 20 minutes and will catch and scorch on the bottom of the pan once they thicken, so stir more often than you would with green lentils.