Main Dishes
Creamy Vegan Lentils with Spinach
Prep
10 minutes
Cook
30 minutes
Yield
4
This super easy creamy lentils with spinach and artichokes recipe is delicious and the perfect comfort food this winter.
Looking for a comforting meal that will warm you from the inside out while delivering the best creaminess, and healthy goodness you need to fuel your body throughout the day? Look no further than these Lentils with Spinach and artichokes.
❤️ Why You’ll Love Lentils with Spinach
- Healthy: These Lentils with Spinach are loaded with fiber and protein
- Delicious: This recipe is creamy and flavorful
- Easy: These lentils are easy-to-make and come together in just 40-minutes
🍲 Ingredients
Lentils – Lentils are a great addition to any vegan or vegetarian recipe. They add a ton of protein and fiber that keeps your full (and regular). Because of their high protein content, this means they are a great meat alternative in your diet. Bonus that they are inexpensive and super versatile to throw in any recipe, whether pasta sauce, salads, or this lentils with spinach recipe. Lentils are also packed with B vitamins, magnesium, zinc, and potassium, and are a fantastic source of iron. Iron is often hard to get enough of when you’re vegan and vegetarian so eating foods like spinach and lentils that are rich in it definitely helps.
Plant Butter – For this recipe, I used one of my go-to kitchen staples, and that’s Califia Farms Plant Butter. If you are vegan, you’ll understand the difficulty in finding the perfect plant butter that is versatile to cook with, bake with, or spread. What’s I love about this plant butter is that it’s made from REAL food like cashews, tiger nuts, nutritional yeast, avocado oil or olive oil. The ingredients are amazing, but you also get that creamy butter-like taste that does all the things you need butter to do (bake, cook, melt, spread). These products stay clear from palm and canola oils and provide that yummy taste you’ll love with the use of whole foods, versus just fat like regular non-vegan butter.
👩🍳 How to Make Lentils with Spinach
- Heat a large pot on medium-low heat and melt the plant butter for 30 seconds before adding the onion, carrot, celery and garlic to the pot
- Cook for at least 5 minutes or until the vegetable are a bit browned and the onions are translucent
- Increase heat to high for 30 seconds before adding the wine. Stir everything till well combined and let the wine completely reduce/evaporate
- Reduce heat to medium-low and add in the lentils. Stir well before adding the vegetable stock, salt, pepper, thyme and bay leaves. Put the lid on and simmer on medium-low heat for 15 minutes
- To the pot, add the half and half or cashew cream and spinach and stir till well combined. Cook for another 5 minutes or until everything is beautiful, fragrant and creamy
- Serve with a splash of red wine vinegar, olive oil, a bit more salt and parsley
🪄 Tips and Tricks
- If you are not a fan of lentils, chickpeas or any other bean with work
- You can use vegetables like kale or chard to replace the spinach
🗒 Best served with
👝 How to Store Leftovers
Store leftovers in a sealed container in the fridge for up to 5 days.
🤔 Common Questions
Lentils on their own can be pretty blah. However, when seasoned and cooked to perfection they can be absolutely delicious. Add seasoning, veggies, throw them into a stew or soup.
You can swap the plant butter for regular butter in this recipe, it just will no longer be vegan.
Lentils with Spinach
Ingredients
- 3 tbsp. Califia Plant Butter
- 1 medium-sized white onion finely chopped
- 1 cup roughly chopped carrot
- 1 cup roughly chopped celery stalk
- 3 cloves of garlic crushed
- 1/2 white wine
- 3 cups cooked black lentils
- 2 cups vegetable stock
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1/2 tsp fresh black pepper
- 1/2 tsp thyme spice
- 2 bay leaves
- 1/2 cup vegan half and half or cashew cream
- 4 cups fresh spinach tightly packed
- serve with red wine vinegar olive oil and parsley
Instructions
- Heat a large pot on medium-low heat and melt the plant butter for 30 seconds before adding the onion, carrot, celery and garlic to the pot. Cook for at least 5 minutes or until the vegetable are a bit browned and the onions are translucent.
- Increase heat to high for 30 seconds before adding the wine. Stir everything till well combined and let the wine completely reduce/evaporate.
- Reduce heat to medium-low and add in the lentils. Stir well before adding the vegetable stock, salt, pepper, thyme and bay leafs. Put the lid on and simmer on medium-low heat for 15 minutes.
- To the pot, add the half and half or cashew cream and spinach and stir till well combined. Cook for another 5 minutes or until everything is beautiful, fragrant and creamy.
- Serve with a splash of red wine vinegar, olive oil, a bit more salt and parsley.
I loved this recipe! Turned out really well. A few modifications based on my personal taste. I didn’t make it vegan. I added some leftover Andouille sausage I had in the freezer, browned that first then added the veggies. I used 4 cups chicken broth to make it more of a soup. Used Tuscan Kale instead of spinach and the already cooked lentils found at Trader Joe’s. Used regular half and half. Delicious and hearty!
This sounds unreal, thank you Camilla!!
Can’t wait to try this! When/How do I add the artichokes?
same oil!
Fantastic recipe. This felt so hearty and healthy going down. I’m Greek and cook with lentils a lot, but had never cooked with black lentils before! They’re smaller and so dense and lovely to bite into. Easy to put together and will become a staple in our household. The only thing I’m wondering about is the artichokes! They’re not in the ingredients or in the instructions… I threw them in anyway! Thanks for another beautiful recipe, Maria!
Thank you so much, Eleni!