Red lentils give this soup a lovely orange color. For a protein boost, serve each portion topped with crumbled feta cheese or a diced hard-cooked egg.
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 quart vegetable or chicken stock
1 cup red lentils
Juice of 1 lemon (about 3 tablespoons)
Salt and pepper
Crumbled feta cheese or hard-boiled egg for garnish (optional)
Variations: You can make this soup with green or brown lentils, but they will require longer cooking to soften.
An Oldways recipe and photo.
Anita says: Can preserved lemon be used in place of the fresh lemon juice/ I’ve had a jar in my pantry, unopened, and would like to start using it.
Katherine-Oldways says: Hi Anita, yes that sounds great! Let us know how it goes.
Anita says: Alas, I used a regular lemon. Next time… I added some cayenne pepper, doubled the garlic, and added lemon sea salt flakes at the end. This is a delicious recipe. It was so good, I sent it on to my brother as well as a friend who’s a soup aficionado.
Courtney says: Question I am hoping you can answer – is it a full head of celery or one stick?!?! Earlier in the book a sandwich serving 1 uses 1 stalk and its one stick!
Hannah-Oldways says: Hi Courtney, One stalk is the correct measurement. But if you’d like, feel free to add more!
T M says: I made this recipe exactly as it was described. It was delicious, quick, easy and I’m definitely making this recipe again.
Sera says: This is a five-star base recipe for someone who’s never cooked a lentil soup before! I made some minor changes, and it still came out delicious.
I am not the biggest fan of straight cumin, but added it anyway since I’ve never eaten it in a recipe like this. Then I did some googling while it simmered, and decided I really wanted more of a curry flavor, so I added a little in addition to the cumin – being careful not to overwhelm (I think in the future I might do 50/50).
I didn’t have any celery on hand, so I sliced up a few baby carrots and then added some celery seed (1/4 tsp).
My soup was nowhere near too thick to need more water to blend; I may have lost some lentils in the rinsing process (the most tedious part for me – I need to learn a better trick for that or get a larger mesh strainer).
I actually thickened it up a little with a slurry, and made a hard boiled egg on the side, and topped it with shredded coconut.
Would love to test next time making it with a coconut milk or coconut flour slurry to thicken if needed to add that flavor right into the soup.
Delicious!
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