What should I do with a newly found 1 pound bag of lentils that has an expiration date of Jan 2004?

Can you cook them in a pressure cooker? I just did a quick google and they might take longer to soak/cook.

I’m going to watch this, but I think they make turned “forever hard” lentils.

@Cupcake‘s suggestion of a pressure cooker may help break them down.

If they’ve been in an airtight container in the dark, you should have no problem at all.

Make lentil soup.

You can also use some lentils with rice and put thinly sliced browned onions on top. You can eat it as a meal or a side dish.

The plastic bag has been on the pantry shelf in the shade for at least 12 years. I have been soaking them in hot water for about an hour and the water has turned brown. I just rinsed them again and will let them soak for another few hours. I don’t mind waiting until tomorrow. I can let them sit over night and see what happens, too.
I do not have a pressure cooker so any cooking I do must be in the microwave or on the stove top.

I like the idea of putting them on rice. The 1 pound bag says it contains 14 servings. that is a whole lot ‘o lentils. I may end up feeding some if it to the hungry critters outside.

Personally, I wouldn’t eat them. The lentils may be okay but who knows what nasty chemicals have leeched into them from the plastic bag. I would cook them and compost them for the garden.

Make a picture.

Give them up for Lent(il).

@downtide What are those chemicals going to do? Give me prostate cancer? :-).

@janbb Hah! Perfect.

Plant them and watch them grow.

I would do whatever you had originally planned to do with them.

Make lentil burgers. Go to youtube for the recipes!

I wouldn’t even think of eating (or even of feeding it to some other creature) something 10 years out of date.

They are soaking overnight as we speak. I put the pot in the refrigerator.
I will absolutely eat them.
I like the idea of lentil burgers, lentil soup, and putting them over rice. I might try frying some in olive oil , or mixing them in eggs.

@CWOTUS I can assure you I never bought them. Probably a party guest brought them and never got around to cooking. There they sat – 12 years on the shelf.

@ZEPHYRA I’ll keep a few out and stick them in potting soil. Maybe they will grow.

FYI: the rice dish is usually made with the lentils incorporated into the rice, but you certainly can put them on top as well.

“Twelve Years a Lentil ” – I can see the movie now!

Sacrilege! Feeding to the critters outside that which you can freeze and eat later! Or make lentil soup, and can some.

in addition to the other ideas, I don’t know why you couldn’t mash/puree some and use them as you would refried beans. That could lead to some seriously delicious dip.

14 servings, pffft! Probably more like 7, if most serving guestimates are any indication.

The thought of 10-year-old lentils sounds just about as appetizing to me as fresh lentils. Yuck.

I’d put them in a cloth bag and use it as a medicinal ‘warm bag’ to put on sore muscles. (Micro-wave when required).

It is 8 AM and I’m eating my first meal with the lentils.
I soaked them overnight in the refrigerator. I got up at 6:00, drained and washed them and then let them simmer for about 1 hr 15 min.
I decided I’d try making a hamburger out of it. so I took 2 ounces of the goop and mixed in a little 4 year old Calhoun’s Taste of Tennessee Charcoal Grill Seasoning and fried it in a pan with some canola oil. It did not stick together at all. I pushed it to one side of the pan and dropped in an egg and fried that. I flipped the whole thing onto a dish when the egg was finished.
With a sprinkle of parsley flakes around the edges of the plate dish it looked great – like some sort of undefined ethnic cuisine. I just ate it. We’ll see if I live.

How will we know if you’ve lived or not lived if you just take this opportunity to desert us as so many have already done and fuck with our heads by not updating the thread or at least storming off in a huff as you proclaim how much you hate us all (except for those who tried to make life better all the time, and bring a smile to your face and give you great new recipes and questions to ponder and all, and you can refer to me as either CWOTUS, or WasCy or CyanoticWasp, either one is cool). Not that you should do that or that anyone expects you to do that, but no one expects the Spanish Inquisition, or for jellies to storm off in a silent huff, either. But they both happen.

In fact, now that I think on it, you should probably eat whatever concoction you’re making at work for lunch or something, because if you eat it and expire at home there in the woods it may be weeks before anyone finds you, and by then all they’d find is a half-eaten corpse surrounded by dead animals in their own various states of un-eaten-ness, leaving a huge mess for some CSI techs to unravel. (Unless you had the critter-cam turned on inside the house, and it was patently obvious even to the CSI: Western New York crew – and who knows how long it’ll be before we see their escapades on television?)

We might never know what happened to you, and coincidentally crash the entire lentil market in North America.

Stop thinking only of yourself for a minute, hey?

And good luck with that so-called breakfast. Twelve-year-old lentils should be okay, but who knows about the things that you’re going to try to cook with them.

^^ I’ll have what he’s having. (And not what you’re having – I hate eggs!)

After reading the masterpiece that @CWOTUS posted, all I can add is that you should probably make some provisions to be mummified. You keep reminding me of the fact that they found viable honey in the tombs of the Egyptian pyramids.

And unlike most Jellies on this thread, you can make me breakfast any time. My constitution is already fortified!

They found olive oil in amphorae when digging up the streets of Milano!

And cheese. Don’t forget the recent discovery of 4000 year old cheese in some mummy’s tomb. Damn, I prolly shouldn’t have mentioned that in this thread. Who knows what @LuckyGuy will attempt to eat next.

Jews for Cheeses!

Chews for Jesus!

Gesundtheit!

I hope that @LuckyGuy properly checked the freshness of his eggs.

Gourd bless us, each and every one, as well!

I want to go back to something that @LuckyGuy said in his first response to my first suggestion (and I guess I will note here the realization that I really need a life if we’re talking about a series of responses to a question about a 12-year-old bag of lentils).

Remind me to bring some ancient canned goods (oh, yes, I have some) if I’m ever invited to a party at @LuckyGuy‘s house. (Just imagine the bacchanalia that must have been going on for someone to bring a bag of lentils as a host gift and have that be un-remarked-upon for a dozen years. That’s the kind of thing that I’d recall for-damn-ever, and I have seen some parties with some pretty weird gifts – and given some, too (parties and weird gifts). I would think that would be a benchmark event in my life, the kind of milepost that I’d orient the rest of my life around: “Was our child born before that party in aught-two when Jerry brought the bag of lentils that’s been on the shelf ever since? Or was it after the year when we had the back-to-back earthquake and tornado?” Just to mention another juxtaposition that almost never happens unless you live in Oklahoma.)

I am back to this Q – and am doing fine. I should definitely eat the more risky stuff while at work. If I expire at the office, the life insurance payout is 7 times my annual salary. If I die while off the clock it is only twice my annual salary. Timing is everything.
It might be a good investment for the insurance company to just buy me a new bag of lentils every year.

My parties are known for being casual, creative, loud, and long. Sometimes people stay for several days! Someone once descried it as a three ring circus. It is a good chance for engineers to try things they cannot do in a more civilized setting. A bag of lentils on the shelf could easily go unnoticed for a decade – just like the extra dishes, ammunition, and that pair of undies with “Juicy” written across the butt.

Damn, now you have me wanting to die where you work, too, just for the ROI. And I’m rational enough to realize how irrational that is, yet it still sounds attractive.

@LuckyGuy how did it taste? I imagine it would have been like eating cooked cardboard.

Also if you have any left I have a good recipe for lentil soup

@downtide It tasted fine. Frankly, it tasted like the Calhoun’s Charcoal Grill Seasoning. (mostly salt). Friends from Tennessee gave the bottle to me 4 years ago so I figured it was time to eat it.
I now have a 4 qt pot full of lentils. I think I’ll divide them into 4 – 1 quart bags and freeze 3 of them for another (desperate) day.

@CWOTUS You’re right! It almost makes it worthwhile to do something stupid.

I have been traveling and got home late last night. For lunch today I just had lentils and pasta. I split one of the 1 qt bags I had in the freezer and defrosted the lentils while I was boiling 75 gm (about 3 oz) of expired pasta elbows. About one minute before the pasta was supposed to be done I poured off most of the water and dumped in the lentils with some cardamom, Zatarain’s Creole spice, and some olive oil. I let the stirred it around and let it boil for another minute. Then drained it and plopped the mess into a bowl. Another sprinkle of olive oil and a dash of Zatarain’s and it was delicious.
I could eat this way for a year!