Lentil Soup

I'm going to apologize in advance for this boring lentil soup. I had a particularily tiring week complete with crashing Brian's Volvo on Monday followed by a three day long exhausting work meeting and a super fun Saturday night in Greenville for a friend's birthday.  Come the end of the week, I had no energy left to make anything other than super easy, super boring lentil soup. This soup is so boring the adorable begging dog wasn't even interested, but in his defense, the landscapers were outside and he was busy protecting the house from their terrible leaf blowers.  Just because its boring doesn't mean its not delicious, because this soup is quite good and very hearty for a soup that lacks meat.

As said many times, this soup is easy-peasy. You'll need the following ingredients: a cup or so of chopped carrots; 4-5 celery stalks, diced; 3-4 garlic cloves, minced; 2 small red potatoes, diced; 1 can of diced tomatoes; 5 sprigs of fresh thyme; 1 to 1 1/2 cups lentils; 6-8 cups of broth; and 1/2 cup of pasta. 

First, get all your veggies chopped up

Then, get your lentils ready. Rocks and other forms of debris have an uncanny ability to sneak their way into bags of lentils, so you want to sift through your lentils to be sure all grossness is removed. I didn't find any grossness in the cup I used for this soup, but I've definitely not sifted through lentils before and cooked some rocks into my soup.

Now you're ready to get everything cooking. I used my trusty 8 quart stock pot. First adding the veggies with a little bit of olive oil and cooking over medium heat, until they were just tender, about 8 minutes.

Next, I added the tomatoes. I used a can of fire-roasted diced tomatoes because I think they have a nice flavor.  Cook the tomatoes for about 10 minutes, stirring every once in a while and breaking the tomatoes pieces up if they seem too big.

Now, add your lentils and thyme. Throw in the entire thyme sprigs, the leaves will fall off as the soup cooks and you will remove the stems before serving.  Stir everything up so that its well mixed.

Add your broth. I used 6 cups of organic chicken broth but if you wanted to make this strictly vegetarian a nice vegetable broth would work well too. Beef broth may even taste nice, but I've never made the soup that way. Increase the heat to high to bring the soup to a boil. Then reduce the heat to low to simmer for about 30 minutes or until the lentils are cooked. Now is also a good time to add any salt, pepper or other seasoning you'd like, I threw in a little crushed red pepper.

Lastly, add your pasta. I used Barilla picollini, the cute little wagon wheel pasta because I like cute things, but you can use anything you like or have around. Or omit the pasta if you want and just add more lentils. Cook for another 6-8 minutes or until the pasta is done, remove the thyme sprigs and enjoy! To serve, you can top with some parmesan cheese, but I think the soup tastes lovely without any added cheese.

This recipe made 6 servings, all about 1 cup each.  Estimated nutrition facts per serving: 210 calories, 1 gram of fat, a whopping 1400 grams of sodium, 42 grams of carbs, 7 grams of dietary fiber, and 10 grams of protein.