Red lentil soup, morocco inspired.

image

Last Sunday was absolutely hectic – I had so many errands to run in addition to driving boys to and from Sunday school, just busy, busy, busy and busy.  With the weather changing three times a day, I also caught a mother of all colds, and I had the biggest craving for comfort food -something that warms you up and gives you a hug from the inside. Taking a look in my cupboard gave me an idea for a red lentil soup. I prepped everything in the morning – sautéed the onions with the spices, added broth and chopped tomatoes brought the base to boil, added everything into the slow cooker, set it for 4 hours and ran out of the house. This soup was a hit – aromatic and flavorful, easy on the waist line and extremely satisfying.  

*Even though this recipe if for a slow cooker, if you don’t have one – you can simmer the soup in the dutch oven or a soup pot on the stove top for about 2 hours with the same result.

*I usually grind my own coriander and cumin, roasting the seeds in the pan just before grinding them , bring out their flavors.

Ingredients
image

  • 2 cups lentils
  • 4 cups vegetable broth
  • 3.5 cups crushed tomatoes
  • 2 cups of water
  • 2 onions chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic minced
  • 1-2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon ground coriander
  • 1 teaspoon sweet paprika
  • 1 teaspoon turmeric
  • ½ teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1 ½ teaspoon salt
  • ½ teaspoon black pepper
  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • 6 tablespoons chopped parsley and/or cilantro (I didn’t have cilantro on hand this time around)
  •  
    image

    Directions

    1.       Heat olive in a Dutch oven and add onions. Cook for about 3 minutes, until the onions are translucent and fragrant.
    image

    2.       Add garlic, spices and salt to the onions and cook about a 1 minute more.
    image

    3.       Add broth, water and tomatoes to the onion mixture, bring to a boil.
    image

    4.       Pour the broth into the slow cooker, and add the lentils.  Cook on “High” for 4 hours of on “Slow” for 6 hours.
    image

    5.       Add lemon juice to the cooked soup, mix and puree (You don’t have to). Garnish with parsley and/or cilantro.
    image

    6.       Bon Appetite!

One response to “Red lentil soup, morocco inspired.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s