Perfect For Winter Curried Lentil Soup

If you're looking for a soup that will fill you up, delight your senses, and cure your winter blues, look no further. This Curried Lentil Soup has everything you need. It's hearty. It's a little spicy. And it's a lot delicious. You probably even have most, if not all, of the ingredients on hand to make right now. That begs the question: What are you waiting for? Let's get to it.

Ingredients

This Curried Lentil Soup has minimal ingredients. Again, you probably have most on hand already. You can find the recipe measurements at the end of the post, so for now, I'll just run through the ingredients list. To start, you'll need an onion, a carrot and a celery stalk. You'll also need two cloves of garlic, a small piece of ginger, red chilli with the seeds removed, a bit of tomato paste, and two small potatoes. For spices, you need cumin, coriander, and garam masala. You can buy garam masala in most grocery stores or, you can make your own, which I'll share a recipe for at the end of the post. Finally, you'll need water and some salt and pepper.

An optional ingredient that I didn't think about until now is a quarter cup of frozen peas. Those would make a great addition to the soup. Also, the lentils should be soaked in water for half an hour before you start cooking. Soaking will soften the lentils and shorten the overall cooking time.

Making The Curried Lentil Soup

Getting Started

To start the soup, heat a medium-sized (2 qt) pot over medium-high heat. Add in two tablespoons of olive oil along with the onion, carrot, and celery. Cook for five minutes or until the onions soften. Stir occasionally.

Flavouring the Soup

The next step is to start building the flavour of the soup. Add the ginger, garlic, and chilli and cook for one minute then add in the spices and cook for thirty more seconds. It's important that you stir while cooking these ingredients otherwise they may burn. Finally, add in the tomato pasta and cook for two minutes. Again, stir the whole time and make sure to scrape the bottom of the pot.

You should follow the timing I've laid out becasue that will open up the ingredients and pull out their flavours. For example, cooking the tomato paste for two minutes will take away the harshness of the paste and even make it a little sweet. Cooking the spices for thirty seconds will cause them to start releasing their oils, giving the soup more flavour than it otherwise would have.

Make the soup a soup

After the tomato paste has had time to cook, add in the water, potatoes, salt, and pepper. Bring the pot to a boil and let it cook for five minutes. Do this to ensure that the potatoes are cooked at the same time as the lentils, which will be added next.

Adding The Lentils and Finishing The Soup

Once the potatoes have boiled for five minutes, drain the lentils and add them into the pot. Bring the pot back to a boil, turn the heat down to medium-low and simmer the soup for twenty minutes or until the lentils and vegetables are tender. Taste the soup and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper as needed. If you were going to add peas to this, you should add them when you add the lentils.

Serving the Curried Lentil Soup

This curried lentil soup was delicious on its own, but I really wanted something to dip in it. So, I made roti or Indian flatbread using chickpea flour. You can find more about the bread from the Instagram post below or check out the book I got the bread recipe from: The Indian Cooking Course Cookbook.

The Wrap Up

It's been cold and stormy here the last few days, and it looks like that weather is going to keep up for a while. This curried lentil soup is the exact thing you need to beat the bad weather blues. It will warm you up. It will fill you up. And, it will make everything feel okay, at least for a little while. Give it a shot! If you do, please remember to rate the recipe.

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