If you soak beans, drain, boil for 20min, drain, and then cook them you will reduce the starches that you don't have enzymes to process (I.e. much less gas).
Lentils are way easier than rice. They can be open boiled and drained so you don't even really have to measure correctly.
One of my favorite I-have-no-money-but-still-need-to-eat meals that I still regularly make is mujadarrah. It goes like this:
Get a big pan and heat enough olive oil in it so the whole pan has a layer. Plenty of oil is good here. Fry around 3 yellow onions cut into rings. Stir occasionally so they brown evenly. While the onions are going, put a pot with 1c of long grain rice and 1c of brown lentils in a pot with around 4 cups of water (or stock if you have it) and a bay leaf. Boil that **** and add liquid if it's drying out and rice and lentils are hard. It's done when they are soft.
Now if you look up recipes for this they will say crap like fry the onions for 10min. Bull****. You want tasty, dark, carmelized dark onions and that's not happening in 10min. If your onions are browning unevenly you can add a little bit of water to the pan and stir. It will deglaze the pan and distribute the heat a little bit. When everything is cooked add salt and lots of pepper (lots!) to the lentils and rice, and mix half of the onions in. Put on plates and top with more onions. That's it. So that is also why plenty of oil is good--the only seasoning is salt, pepper, onions. You can serve it with chutney, yogurt, or I suppose whatever you want.
