Lentils

Lentils are the legume that makes the rest of the bean bucket look slow: no soak, 20 to 30 minutes in the pot, 1,600 calories and over 100 grams of protein a pound, and up to 5 years in a sealed container with longer in Mylar. They are the protein for the first week of an outage, when fuel is short and nobody soaked anything the night before, and they belong in the bag for the same reason.

Brown and green lentils hold their shape and are the all-purpose ones; red and yellow lentils are split, cook in 15 minutes, and fall apart into a thick soup, which is what you want for dal and for thickening. Black (beluga) and French green lentils are firmer and cost more. Buy the brown ones in bulk for the store and keep a bag of red for the fast meals. Sort a handful for small stones before cooking; bulk lentils carry a few.

Cool, dark and dry, in something airtight. The original bag or box is fine for the months you will use it in; for the years, the answer is the same as for rice: a Mylar bag with an oxygen absorber inside a food-grade bucket, which keeps out oxygen, moisture, light and every insect egg that came home from the mill. The Mylar ranking says which foods take an absorber and which do not.

A 5 gallon bucket holds about 33 pounds of lentils. They take an absorber. Old lentils cook a little slower; they do not go hard the way old beans do.

Dry, clean-smelling lentils are fine at any age. Mold, webbing, small beetles or a musty smell mean the bag goes. Faded color is age. A few tiny stones are normal in bulk lentils and the reason to spread a handful on a plate before cooking.

A cup of dry lentils makes about two and a half cups cooked and feeds three; plan on a pound per person per week in the first weeks. Rinse, cover with three cups of water per cup of lentils, simmer 20 to 30 minutes (15 for red), salt at the end. Lentils with rice is a complete protein and a meal on its own; lentils with a can of tomatoes and a spoon of curry powder is dal; a handful thickens any soup. They sprout in a jar in two to three days for a green vegetable in winter.

The outage legume. Twenty minutes on a camp stove, or a five minute boil and 40 minutes in a wrapped pot or thermal cooker, with no soak and no planning. Red lentils are faster still.

Shelf-life figures are from the Survival Foods field guide; fridge, freezer and pantry times are from the USDA cold and pantry storage charts. Run the look, smell, taste check before eating anything past its date.