Lentils feel like warm-country food โ Indian dal, Mediterranean soup. But America's lentils grow where the winters are long.
A lentil is the flat little seed of a small bean-family plant, dried for storage. It's a pulse โ the same food family as dry beans, chickpeas and split peas.
Basis: Botany: lentils (Lens culinaris) are pulses โ dried edible legume seeds โ textbook.
America's lentils grow mostly in the cool, dry north โ Montana and the rolling Palouse hills of the Northwest โ not in a hot place at all. Lentils are a cool-season crop that likes mild summers.
Basis: USDA NASS lentil production by state (this site's lentils quiz); cool-season agronomy โ established.
Lentils are in a hurry: unlike big dry beans they need no soaking and cook quickly. They're also one of the oldest farmed foods on Earth โ people have eaten them for thousands of years.
Basis: Archaeology/culinary: lentils are among the earliest domesticated crops and cook without soaking โ established.
Why the north again โ beans, sugar beets, and now lentils? A tidy explanation is that these hardy crops all like cool summers and a dry harvest season. It fits, but every crop belt also has its own tangled history.
โป A hypothesis is an idea that isn't proven yet.
๐ Sources for the rankings mentioned in this note (links to the original data and retrieval dates) are on each quiz page below.