Lentil Tomato Soup Recipe

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Hi! Welcome to Freshly Served, the healthy vegan cooking show. I’m Heather and tonight we are making a lentil soup and this is gonna be a great one if your getting home from the office and you don’t feel like making dinner, spending a lot of time on it. This one is gonna have a little bit of prep work and then we’re gonna leave it to sit for about an hour so the lentils can cook through and everything in the soup, all the flavors will merge together.

So I got things started over here, I’ve got some onion chopped up with some garlic and I’ve chopped the onions about say a quarter of an inch. This soup is gonna be a little bit chunky with some diced tomatoes and things so I like to leave the onion little bit on the bigger side and we’re gonna make sure its thoroughly cooked before I add anything else and its cooking in just a little bit of olive oil.

Onions and garlic cooking, one of the greatest smells ever to come out of the kitchen, other than the course baking whenever I’m making dinner I start with the onion and the garlic Phil says “Hmm, that smells delicious! What are you making?” “Oh! Onions and garlic, you know you’re favorite.”

Ok! So these have gone from translucence to they’re just starting to brown and at this point I’m going to add a little bit Phil’s honey wine, one of my favorite things to cook with.

You don’t have to use any wine if you don’t want to or if you don’t have any. I just find it adds just a touch of flavor before I pour the liquid in on these onions. Ok! So you just need to let that cook off just a little bit.

And what I’m gonna do next is add my spices and herbs so I’m gonna have a little bit of sea salt of course and I’ll put more in once I get the liquid in but I’ll put that in on the onion and a little bit of pepper and I’ll get some basil, some oregano and some marjoram and I’m gonna do some Italian seasonings in this one.

So put the herbs in now because they got a chance to mix in with the oil before we put the water in. If I put them in after the water goes in they just gonna float around and they will take a lot longer to combine with the other flavors.

So, there you go! And my wine has pretty much cook off so it’s time to add the water now and this of course is filtered water. I live in a place that chlorinates their water with chloramines. I’ll probably gonna talk about that another time for now I’m just saying that it isn’t something that I am happy about.

Ok! So I got the water in there and I’m now going to add the lentils. And I don’t actually normally measure these guys, I just kinda throw them in so I’m measuring for your benefit today so we’ll see how this goes.

Here we are! Lentils are great, a great beans to cook when you’re in a rush because you don’t need to soak them beforehand. Most dried beans unless you get them on can, most dried beans you need to soak them before cooking them.

To soften them up otherwise you need to cook them for you know for about five hours but lentils cook very quickly for a bean so they’re gonna cook up in only about – you can probably cook them in about half an hour but I’m gonna put them in this soup and let them get really nice and soft and combine them with the other flavors.

So ok! So I got the lentils in there, next I’m gonna add is a canned of diced tomatoes should bring a little bit of flavor in there and give that a stir so the tomatoes add quite a bit of liquid with the juice so I don’t need quite as much water as I normally would when I use canned tomatoes.

So there we go! I’m just gonna let that simmer, I’m not gonna add any salt right now. I’ve added some in the onion and I’ll give it a little while for the lentils to cook and I’ll add the salt about halfway through.

Ok! So this has been over here cooking away for about half an hour and the lentils are now cooked. You could eat this now if you wanted to or you can let it simmer for about another half an hour so you don’t wanna go too long because the lentils will get really mushy and will kind just break up and it will be more like a stew which is you know – which is good on its own.

But if you wanna have it as a nice vegetable, solid lentil soup then just turn it down to minimum. Let it simmer and in about half an hour should be good. Now I’m gonna add some kale to mine at the very end and greens are really nice in this soup, they mix in with the flavors really nicely.

So what I’m going to do right now is add some salt to really bring the flavors together and this soup can take quite a bit of salt so make sure you put enough in, stir it up and let it simmer and I’ll probably add my kale about, in about fifteen minutes and then no probably a bit till about twenty five so about five minutes before you actually want to eat this soup you can throw your greens in and then they have time to just soften up but not get overly cooked.

If they get cooked too much they’re gonna lose all their nutrients so put the lid on there, leave that for about twenty five minutes and then I’ll be back to add the greens. Hmm, the smell of tomatoes has added itself to the onion and garlic so awesome.

Alright! So I’m gonna add the kale now and I’m just gonna cut the big ends off of this kale and I’ll just chop it up in strips. Kale is pretty tough so it can take being cut and cook in soup so lentil soup awesome to have on a night when you really just wanna fill yourself up.

This soup is nice and filling, you can also get your greens in there to lighten up a little bit. So I’m just gonna stir this right into the soup. Make sure they get into the liquid so that they just wilt.

And really it doesn’t even need to cook much more at this point because you can see the greens will start to wilt as soon as they got in the hot liquid and I’m gonna just throw some pumpkin seeds on top.

If you like you can toast them a little bit, now would be a good time to get them toasted coz they don’t take very long or another kind of nut. I haven’t put a lot of fat in this soup because protein digests much much easier if with there is no fat when you prepare them.

A little bit of nut or seed on top of this soup isn’t gonna affect that too much as long as it’s just a little bit, you should be good. You just don’t wanna be you know mixing nuts right into the soup like a cup of nuts in here would be too much. Little nuts on top, ok!

Alright! So I’m just gonna let that sit a little bit to let the salt and pepper work their way in and I think we’ll be ready to serve it up.

So this soup is ready to serve, a lovely party lentil soup, great for a cold night, great for a night when you don’t wanna do much prep. I did the dishes while this soup was cooking, not many dishes either, cutting board and knife and well the pot when I’m donte with that and yeah great meal.

Throw some pumpkin seeds on top there, you can serve this along with maybe a corn bread or a big salad, there are some greens in here but always nice to have some fresh greens.

So there you go! A wonderful healthy vegan lentil soup, very nice for a cold night! Enjoy!