When you grow up in Spain, you eat a lot of lentils. Kids love lentils. Adults love lentils. You also eat a lot of beans and chickpeas, but that is different. Although you often have cocido, fabada, or alubias at home, there are restaurants famous for these dishes. Lentils are different. Lentejas is not what you order in a restaurant. I don’t think I ever have—maybe in a basic menú del día place. Nobody drives anywhere to a specific restaurant to have lentils on a Sunday or for somebody’s birthday.

In my imagination—and I extrapolate this to all Spaniards—lentejas represent having lunch at home during a normal weekday. Kids often come back from school during the midday break. Lentejas are definitely not what you would prepare if you are having friends over for dinner. But if lentils are ready and you are going to have them anyway, then it is the kind of dish that allows you to ask somebody if they want to tag along. With lentejas, if there is food for four, then there is food for eight. They are invariably prepared in large pots. Nobody has ever made lentejas for two people. At least not in my family. At home in Rennes, they fall under the “food security” kind of dish—those you prepare on Sunday to have something for a couple of meals during the week.

There are incredibly many bean recipes, and each one calls for a different kind of bean. There is no way you are making fabada without using proper fabes. Local beans are a source of local pride. Besides the Asturian fabes and verdinas, everybody in Spain has heard of judiones de El Barco de Ávila, alubias de Tolosa, garrofó from Valencia, alubias pintas from León, and so on. All of these beans are clearly different and not interchangeable. Lentils are different. There are a few varieties, but nobody really cares which ones you use. And, with very minor variations, lentejas are always cooked the same way. You can make them more or less soupy, add or skip carrots, peppers, and leeks, leave the stock more watery or blend the cooked vegetables for a smoother, thicker gravy, add morcilla, and so on, but this does not really change the dish. Some people eat lentejas with rice and others don’t. Some people chop boiled egg on top and others don’t. I am the rice-but-mostly-no-egg kind of guy. But as you see, this changes nothing.

At the same time, expressing negative opinions about somebody’s lentils is akin to saying that somebody’s cat is ugly. It is not forgotten. In my family, everybody knows that my uncle, who otherwise is somebody who does not seek controversy, once upon a time, long before I was born, came back from military service claiming that the army lentils were the best he had ever eaten. My grandmother, his mother, who was a very good cook, didn’t comment on that, but everybody knows—and I am sure that she never forgot the slight. I can relate. The being, with all the lack of innocence of a 10-year-old, keeps telling me how good the lentejas my mother prepares are. Even while she is eating the ones I made. Especially then. With all my love for the being, she is playing with fire: you don’t forget if somebody tells you that your cat is ugly, and you don’t forget if somebody says that somebody else’s lentejas are better than yours.

Chorizo is a universal ingredient in lentejas and in most bean dishes, and this is a problem if you are vegetarian. Indeed, it is really hard to cook anything that resembles fabada without putting in half of a pig. The same goes for cocido. In the case of lentejas, there is no such problem: you add a bit more pimentón instead of chorizo, and that’s it. In general, if you add pimentón to anything, it tastes Spanish. I am sure that if you add pimentón to lemon curd, it will taste Spanish. Maybe not very good, but Spanish.

Anyways, if you want a recipe, you can just google it. Since it is a pretty basic dish, it will not matter what recipe you use. If you are too lazy to do it, here you have one with chorizo, and a vegetarian one.