Lentil Soup

This recipe is closely adapted from Bryant Terry’s Vegetable Kingdom. I am not a vegan by any stretch of the imagination, but I love vegan/vegetarian cooking for its unmasked, distilled incorporation of ingredients. Beets taste like beets. Puree of celery takes you a little bit deeper in your relationship with an otherwise “stock” character. Pun intended.

This recipe is from the type of cook book that encourages you to have two coffee grinders in the house. One for the obvious and another for all the spice blends that you're gonna make yourself. If you own a copy of Vegetable Kingdom, you can just proceed to pg. 215 and choose your own adventure from there. But if you don't, I will gladly point you in the right direction from here. Not every recipe has a photo. It's like Terry’s saying, "Trust me". And you should.

INGREDIENTS

• 3 Tablespoons olive 0il

• 1 Cup diced yellow onion

• 3/4 Cups peeled and finely diced of the following::

  carrot

  -sweet potato

  -parsnip

• 2 teaspoons kosher salt

• 2 Cups dried lentils

• 2 Cups diced tomatoes

• 8 cups stock

• 3 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice

• 1/4 Cup coconut oil

• 6 cloves minced garlic

• 1 hot pepper of some kind

• 1 Tablespoon cumin seeds

• 1 teaspoon sweet paprika

• Freshly ground pepper

Directions:

Step 1

Heat olive oil. Add root veggies and salt, stirring until soft.

Step 2

Stir in lentils, tomatoes and stock; bring to a boil.

Reduce heat and simmer until lentils are tender, about 45 mins.

Step 3

Stir in lemon juice.

Step 4

When lentils are almost finished, melt coconut oil.

Step 5

Add garlic and hot peppers, stirring until aromatic, 1-2 minutes.

Step 6

Add cumin seeds and cook for 30 seconds.

Stir in paprika, let it sizzle and immediately stir into soup.

Step 7

Season to taste with salt, pepper and additional lemon juice. It’s nice to serve with a hunk of crusty bread and a flourish of cilantro.

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Recipe Source: Terry, Bryant. Vegetable Kingdom. Ten Speed Press: 2020, p. 215.