🥞 Turkish Lentil Soup
11 Feb, 2020A Turkish-style Lentil Soup; a great, hearty soup that goes great with flatbread.
Turkish Lentil Soup
Prep Time: 15m - Cook Time: 25m - Total Time: 40m
Ingredients
- 1 1/3 cup (8oz) red lentils
- 8 cups vegetable broth
- 1 Spanish onion
- 1 large carrot
- 4 cloves garlic
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- lemon juice & peppermint for garnish
Instructions
- In a large pot, add carrots, onion, garlic, lentils, tomato paste, cumin, cayenne, & broth; bring to boil
- Lower heat to medium-low & simmer uncovered until vegetables are tender and lentils fall apart (25-30min)
- Remove from heat and blend using an immersion blender until there aren't large chunks but it's not completely smooth
- In serving bowl, mix in lemon juice and garnish with mint
Notes
Cooking
- I find it cooks better if you put the thicker ingredients like carrots and onion at the bottom
- I like toasting some garlic naan (or other flatbread) olive oil as a side
- Note: this can make a lot of smoke; open some windows
Ingredients
- Lemon & mint garnish is definitely worthwhile
- I find peppermint works really well; spearmint not so much
- I don’t add salt out of preference
- Vegetable broth can be replaced with a vegetable stock, you’ll just get a stronger flavor
- I’ve used “Thai Culinary Stock” before and omitted the garnish
- Red lentils taste better than green lentils in my opinion
- Green lentils are more earthy and don’t have the same flavor complexity in this dish
- Green lentils don’t break apart as nicely as red lentils; cooking time may vary
- If you use green lentils you definitely want to add some salt
Derivation & Modifications
Original recipe: https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/turkish-style-red-lentil-soup
- 8 cups of broth instead of 7 (uses two boxes exactly)
- Replace the onions with one large spanish onion
- Explicitly write in preferences from the ingredient notes above
Reheating
This recipe makes a lot (yay!), but roommates, it won’t taste as good if you don’t garnish it.
- Take out of fridge
- Put in bowl
- Heat in microwave, 3-5min-ish
- It’s ok if you get a strange foamy mesh thing on the top, it mixes back in without issue
- Tastes better if you make it hot and let it cool than if you don’t heat it enough
- Add 1-2tsp-ish of lemon juice (depending on how much you put in bowl)
- Rinse 2 large/4 medium mint leaves and put in bowl
- Eat with naan
- To keep naan moist, lightly spread water on both sides before microwaving