Potted legumes are a very useful resource in the kitchen. Not in vain, legumes are a food deeply rooted in our gastronomy, with great versatility, delicious and loaded with beneficial properties for health. But they have the disadvantage of requiring a long cooking time and even soaking before cooking.
To overcome this aspect, jarred legumes save us a lot of time and make our daily lives easier. We can prepare them in stews, cold salads or use them for creams. Of course, it may happen that you use the jar of vegetables, but you do not need all the quantity it contains. When this happens, it is common to resort to adding water to the jar to keep the legumes in the refrigerator, but this is a mistake.
The dietitian-nutritionist and food technologist Aitor Sánchez is known on social networks as @midietacojea. On his Instagram profile he has 317 thousand followers who do not miss any of his educational content on food and health.
Among them, he has shared a video where he recommends not making the mistake of adding water to the jar of legumes when we want to store it in the refrigerator once opened, focusing the example specifically on a jar of lentils. “Do not add water to your jarred legumes, just cover it tightly and close it, it can last up to three days in the refrigerator,” says the expert.
He explains that, if we add water to the legume in a jar, “you will make it much more attackable by microorganisms that can proliferate in a much simpler way if all the nutrients that the lentils already have are diluted.”
Now, he accompanies his explanation with a trick that we can do so that jarred legumes last longer in the refrigerator once opened: add a splash of lemon juice. “That way you will prevent them from turning brown,” because “the vitamin C in lemon is an antioxidant and will protect the lentils.”
Regarding his video, a user asks in the comments if you should not wash jarred vegetables with water either. In his response, Aitor Sánchez assures that no, because “this way we would be removing the salt and antioxidants that come with the legume.”
Precisely in his nutrition questionnaire for La Vanguardia, Aitor Sánchez answered the question of a reader who asked if legumes that come in a jar are just as healthy as those that are bought raw and cooked at home.
“The legume already cooked in a jar is a very practical resource to be able to consume it easily, it does not imply any loss of nutritional quality or the addition of uninteresting ingredients. They usually simply contain water and salt, and at most, some antioxidant or preservative,” pointed out the nutritionist.
