Thanks to a family dinner favorite, I've cooked a lot of lentils over the years—especially the small French ones. I used to simmer them in plain water, adding the salt at the very end (the way I'd been taught to cook beans in cooking school), so the lentils could absorb it off the heat. In class, we were instructed that salt interfered with the cooking, slowing it down. What irked me was that even the French lentils, which hold their shape better than the supermarket brown ones, would split and collapse, turning mushy if I didn't watch them carefully. Not a total disaster for the dish, but muddier than anyone liked. Thinking about all those chunks of salted pork that cook with beans to great advantage in so many cultures around the world, I tried starting my lentils off with some salt (my family has some vegetarian leanings, so no pork in the cooking) and finishing them with more salt to taste at the end. The lentils held their shape, tasted better, and best of all, took only five minutes longer to cook—time well spent for a superior result. I've been cooking all my beans and lentils that way for a number of years now, and I'll never go back.
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