question:cooking time for red lentils

[Susann]

Tonight we are 'going to' California and one of the recipes I am trying is a lentil soup. I could only get red lentils, though. Do I need to adjust cooking times or does it matter? Thanks for helping! I will post my review of everything later on!

[kima]

Funny I just made a lentil soup with red lentils this morning! Red lentils cook very quickly- in about 20 mins. They tend to fall apart more than other lentils- not a bad thing but it may change the consistensy of the soup. Good luck and looking forward to your review!

[lsdesign]

I often make a Curried Red Lentil Soup that appeared in the April 1997 issue of CL. It is the best soup made w/o stock ever, just water. They mention in a note following the recipe that red lentils are smaller and take a shorter time to cook and need less liquid.So I just test after 20 minutes to see how they are doing.