Turkish Lentil Soup

Who doesn’t like a warm soup on these cold winter nights? A good filling soup is also a lighter option for dinner; just what everyone needs after the Christmas period filled with fattening (but amazing!) food.

There probably isn’t a kind of soup that I don’t like, but lentil soup is my favourite. It reminds me of my childhood and my grandmother’s house. It’s so easy to make yet it’s so recomforting and tasty that I’m sure you will keep on doing it 🙂

I did a little research on google to find out if there were any recipes for this soup in English and I wasn’t disappointed. However all of the recipes that I went through called for tomato sauce and/or tomatoes which is surprising because we don’t cook it with tomatoes in my family. It’s the same for restaurants and my friends families as well, no mentioning of tomatoes. There is however, a soup called “Ezogelin” (can be translated as “ezo” bride although I don’t have any idea what “ezo” means 🙂 ) made with tomato sauce, red lentils, rice and some other ingredients so maybe those recipes were actually talking about this soup? Who knows. Let’s skip to the ingredients!

Ingredients:

• 200 gr of red lentils
• 1 big or 2 small potatoes
• 1 onion
• 1 carrot
• 1 tbsp of flour
• 1,5-2 litres of water (you can use chicken or beef broth or use cubes)
• salt and pepper
• Approx. 1 tbsp of olive oil

Sauce (optional)

• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes (you can add more or less as you wish)

Instructions

1. Peel the potatoes and carrots. Dice the potatoes and slice the carrots. Put aside.
2. In a large pot heat 1 tbsp of olive oil. Chop the onion and add it to the pot.  Cook them until they are tender.
3. Add one tbsp of flour to the onions and mix it good for 1-2 minutes.
4. Add the carrots and potatoes and cook it for a further 2-3 minutes.
5. Add water/broth and the cubes if you are using. Add salt and pepper to taste.
6. Put the heat to medium and cook until lentils, carrots and potatoes are tender. This might take around 30-40 minutes in a normal pot. I prefer cooking in a pressure cooker as it’s much more faster (approximately 10 minutes!).
7. Take the soup off the heat and let it cool a bit. Mix everything with a mixer. You are finished if you won’t make the sauce! 🙂

Sauce

1. In a small saucepan, mix the butter with red pepper flakes until it’s melted. Drizzle the sauce over the soup served in bowls.

If you find the soup to be so thick for your taste you can add boiled water to make it more liquid. You can serve it with some croutons if you like! We also like to squeeze a few drops of lemon juice but this is entirely optional as well 🙂 Bon appétit or “afiyet olsun” as we say in Turkish!! 🙂