Seasonal recipe: Lentil soup

The chilly fall weather demands a big pot of hearty soup, and this soup will meet that demand.

Wed, Oct 20 2010 at 2:03 PM

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Healthy Eating, Recipes

My refrigerator and freezer are cleaned out, organized and sparkly thanks to my first assignment for The Kitchen Cure. Yesterday, I began working on my food cabinets. Shoved in the back of one of the cabinets was a full bag of organic lentils that I don’t remember buying, but I can only imagine I bought them to make a soup that I forgot about.

I did some searching for lentil soup yesterday, and after getting the basic gist of what spices are usually used with lentil soup, I set out to create my own recipe. If I do say so myself, I made a really delicious soup. My house smelled so good as I sat at my computer and worked yesterday, too.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cup dry lentils
8 cups chicken broth or stock
2 cups sliced carrots*
1 ½ cups cubed potatoes
1 (14 ½ oz) can diced tomatoes, juiced drained
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup sliced celery
1 cup sliced onion
2 teaspoon minced garlic
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 bay leaves
2 (2-inch square) Parmesan cheese rinds (if you have them)
Grated Parmesan cheese

Directions

Put lentils, chicken broth, carrots, potatoes and diced tomatoes into a large pot, and turn to high.
Heat olive oil in a skillet and add onions, garlic and celery. Sauté for about 5 minutes. Add to broth.
Add salt, thyme, pepper, bay leaves and cheese rinds.
Bring to a boil. Then reduce to a simmer and cook for one hour. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary.
Remove bay leaves and what’s left of the cheese rinds, and serve with grated Parmesan cheese on top.

My notes

You don’t have to sauté the garlic, onion and celery, but sautéing the garlic and onion bring out some of the flavor in them, and since my men don’t like crunchy celery in their soups, adding them to the sauté pan helps to soften them up before I put them in the soup.
* Usually a soup will have an equal amount of carrots, celery and onion, but because of my men (again) I doubled the carrots because they like lots of carrots.
I think that a cooked, small pasta could easily be substituted for the potatoes.

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