Living away from a Wegmans is rough sometimes, especially when you’re searching for not so common ingredients. I book marked this recipe video for red lentil zucchini fritters from Bon Appetit and decided last week that I was going to try this out because I’d be able to find everything without driving 30-40mins to Wegamans. I was almost wrong. I spent an hour or so after work last Wednesday driving to three different grocery stores in town to finally find one bag of red lentils. By the time I made it back to my apartment I was hangry and over it. Which is why it took another few days for me to finally have the time and mental preparedness to actually try this recipe.
This dish is made by Sohla and i’ve been feeling a little iffy with these fried fritters I keep picking from Bon Appetit but she makes it look easy and totally manageable. Sohla does make a lemony yogurt dip to go with them but I opted out and just tried to focus on the fritters. First off, the elusive red lentils. Turns out these are harder to find here than the should be but I’m honestly not THAT surprised and I’m happy I did mange to get a bag and it wasn’t expensive. I’m interested to learn more about lentil use because I have a good amount left. Anyways, I started off soaking the lentils and prepping the zucchini and onion as instructed. While I was waiting for all of this I also made smashed potatoes from Molly Baz but that’ll be coming once I get a solid photo.
Once soaked, I pulverized the lentils and mixed them with the veggies (that I dried with a towel). Sohla says that it will look like a lot of veggies to lentils but to trust the process. She hit the nail on the head because I was quite concerned but I trusted her and honestly, I was SUPER skeptical but she was right. Everything worked out in the end.
So Sohla fries them in a good amount of ghee but I failed to remember I was almost out of a neutral oil so I used less oil to fry than she did. I don’t think it made a substantial difference but i might’ve gotten better frying with more oil with a higher heat.
My fritters came out smelling amazing. I did get a little skittish and didn’t fry them to quite as brown as Sohla instructed so mine weren’t as crisp but they still tasted amazing. The lentils get really nice and crispy but the onions and zucchini get really warm and soft and I love that dual texture. They veggies help hydrate the crisp lentils quite a bit for a perfect balance. Next time I won’t be so worried about the ratio but I may just toss the leftovers into a pan to reheat them and crisp them up a little more in the future. I’ve already recommended this recipe to people and would totally try them again. I do have lentils leftover.