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LENTIL SOUP: “STICK TO YOUR RIBS KINDA STUFF”
I return to you, not with the first soup that I’ve made this year- the first I made needs some tweaking to the recipe. Instead, I come with the first soup I ever learned how to make. The foundational soup if you will, is the one that showed me the path to follow other culinary adventures. A soup I feel is somehow in my DNA but until recently I hadn’t actually thought to ask how it is made. I am of course talking about Lentil Soup.
In conversations with friends Lentil soup appears to be a soup where everyone has their own personal attachment.
My first memory of lentil soup is from when I was 3 sitting at the dining table, swinging my legs, and looking down at the warm bowl. I was handed a wee jug of milk to pour in, creating a milky spiral in the orangy glow. For a long time, I thought you did this for all soups always, as if the last step was always to finish off with a flurry of splashed milk. This concept was ruined however when I ate at friends’ houses who did not partake in the theatre of a milk finish.
With this being the first soup I learned how to make I decided to go right to the start of where I learnt the recipe and asked my mum. She begins to list off ingredients and pauses to say “I’m trying to remember where I got this recipe but I guess I just have it in my head now”. She gives me rough estimates of how many teaspoons, and how she adapts the recipe to what else she has, whether that’s parsnips instead of turnips or leeks instead of onions but highlights the importance of balance between sweet, salty, and earthy flavours. As she recalls the steps she keeps repeating “You’ll know yourself cause you cook” and again I feel as though this soup is one that teaches you not just a 123 of how to feed yourself but also how to trust yourself and the process of creating. My tip would be to trust your nose, use your eyes, and taste along the way cause you might even still be adding more salt when it’s dished up, it’s up to you.
I’ve done my best at putting the recipe into words and steps but truly this is a soup you follow with your heart. And in the words of my mum “The more you do it the more you’ll know”
LENTIL SOUP: HOW I WAS TAUGHT.
Ingredients
1 large onion (can use leek but if doing that don’t use onion too) Diced
Stick of celery Diced
Carrots (for colour) 5 or 6. Diced
1/4 Turnip (for earthiness but be aware it can be overpowering) (can be substituted with some parsnips). Diced
1 large Potato (doesn’t matter what kind. Is essential to offset the sweetness of the other veg). Diced
Around a quarter of a bag of red lentils
1L of Stock Veg, chicken or Ham (as long as everything is covered along with some more as it goes on)
1 or 2 Bay leaves
Small teaspoon of nutmeg
1 teaspoon of smoked paprika (Mum said this was cause her mum would have used ham hock, which she doesn’t always use but gives it that essence of smokey meatiness)
Fresh parsley (a good handful) finely chopped
25g of butter
Method
In a large pot melt your butter and start frying off the celery and onion till softened at medium heat for 5mins
Add carrots, stir, and coat in butter, then the potato, stir and coat, and then your turnip followed by a stir and coat. fry them all off for around 3-5mins
Scrunch in a good helping of salt, cracked pepper, nutmeg, and paprika mixing through the veg for a further 2-3mins
Sprinkle in the red lentils mixing them through to make the other veg become polka dotty.
Pour in your stock and bring to a boil before you add your bay leaf
Bring it down to a simmer and let it bubble away until the veg is soft and the lentils have almost melted away
Remove the bay leave and zuzz, leaving some chunkiness to the pot
Taste, season a little more, add your parsley, taste again see if it needs anything else
Serve in your favorite bowl with or without a satisfying mound of ham hock, or with a sausage roll, or with thick white bread, more parsley, and a swirl of milk for good luck
I’d like you to hear your lentil soup stories as I find they are often filled with such love and comfort. I’ll write about this again as I feel there is more on the topic of lentils to explore. I read that in some cultures lentils symbolise good fortune and renewal which feels fitting to share as the first soup of the year.
Thanks for souping with me
SOUPBITCH XXX