Kristin’s Playground

I like lentil soup. It’s healthy, tasty, and it can be quite versatile. Himal Chuli, a Nepali restaurant in Madison, WI first introduced me to lentil-based soups with its dal. Such tastiness! I’d never imagined myself liking lentil soup before then, but it was fabulous. So, I set about trying to make my own once. Of course, my finished product is not really similar to Himal Chuli’s dal, but it’s tasty in its own right. This is my latest incarnation, but you can use whatever vegetables you’ve got lying around, and whatever spices you’re in the mood for; it seems quite forgiving. (If I can make it without having to follow an exact recipe - it must be!)

1. Take a bag of lentils (probably a pound - I didn’t check) and pour it into a large pot. You want to quickly sort through it and pick out any bad lentils or other things that don’t belong. Rinse them a couple of times, then cover them with water and boil them for 10 minutes. Warning, the lentils soak up a lot of water, so keep an eye on it and add more as needed. I didn’t add enough water to begin with, so be generous.
   
2. While they’re boiling, you can start chopping up some veggies for your soup. Here I used about 2/3 of an onion, chopped finely.
   
3. I also chose to add about half of a red pepper, also chopped finely.
   
4. After the lentils have boiled for 10 minutes, drain the water and put the lentils off to the side. (I put them in a separate container since I wanted to use the same pan for the next step, but you could use two pans here and leave the lentils where they are.)
   
5. Add a little bit of oil to the pan and cook your onions and peppers (or whichever vegetables you choose) for a couple of minutes.
   
6. Don’t forget to add some garlic at this stage! I think I used 3 cloves.
   
7. Once the onions are nicely cooked, add your lentils back to the pan (or add your onions to your lentil pan), and add some soup stock (I used 2 cans) and some water (about half a can). I used chicken since we had a lot of it, but you can make the soup vegan with a vegetable stock. Low sodium stock is useful so you can control the salt content of your final soup.
   
8. Bring the mixture to a boil and then let it simmer.
   
9. At this point, I like adding a few more vegetables, so here I chopped up a yellow potato.
   
10. And some celery.
    
    I would also have liked to add some carrots, and perhaps some tomatoes, but we didn’t have either on hand. Ah well!
11. Spice time! This can be entirely up to you, but I used a fair bit of cumin, some curry powder, paprika, salt, some tumeric, and just enough cayenne to feel a little burn in the back of my throat. Taste this along the way; you’re making the soup for you, so you can make it however you’d like!
12. Let everything simmer together until your potatoes (and/or carrots) are as tender as you’d like them and some of the water has evaporated away - half an hour or so. Mash everything up just a little bit with a potato masher - it’s a thick soup.
13. Have some of your freshly made soup, and since it makes a fair bit, you can freeze some to eat later.
    
    (Sorry I didn’t get any pictures of the ready-to-eat version this time - guests came over just as it was finishing, so it got a little rushed.) It microwaves pretty well. Enjoy!