One of my favourite things about travelling is discovering new dishes to bring back with me. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a food native to the city/country, for example, when I came back from London I almost immediately made this fish with romesco sauce. But oftentimes it is something local… like my love for making French macarons. While in Turkey my travel buddy and I ate A LOT of lentil soup. It’s not like we had it every day or anything, but considering my normal lentil soup consumption, it felt like we definitely had a lot of the stuff.
And for good reason… the Turks can hook up a cup of lentil soup! It’s pretty magical. It’s usually not the brown/greenish lentil soups that I normally eat. It’s also usually not chunky and more of a pureed situation. What brought me a particular level of joy was the fact that most of the soups had an oddly meaty depth to them which really complimented the lentil flavour. Couple that with an unfamiliar spice profile and I was basically in heaven.
Here in Evanston the weather has officially changed which means that soup season is upon us. I’m in that weird phase where I still want to hold on to the remnants of summer and don’t really know what type of jacket to wear. Actually, what’s more stressful is that I want to wear flats and skinny jeans but I hate when the top part of my foot gets cold. Yup, you can just hashtag that one “firstworldproblems”.
So with the chill in the air I knew that it was time to whip up a batch of soup and given my current love for all things Turkish, I began the process of figuring out what to put in my lentil soup. For the most part the recipes were pretty consistent, the one variation was whether or not to include mint and occasionally the recipe would call for a squeeze of lemon at the end. Across the board the recipes called for red lentils and is spice with some cumin, crushed red pepper and cayenne.
This soup immediately transported me back to Turkey (minus the constant catcalls from Turkish men). I made some open-faced toasted cheese sandwiches to go along with the soup and it was honestly one of the best and most satisfying dinners that I’d had in a while. This will definitely stay in my soup season rotation.
Turkish Red Lentil Soup
Adapted from Whole Foods Recipe
1 1/3 cup (about 8 ounces) red lentils, picked through and rinsed
7 cups low-sodium broth (I used chicken)
1 large onion, diced
1 large carrot, diced
4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper, or to taste
3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt, or to taste
Lemon wedges, sumac and chopped mint for serving (optional)
To a large pot, add lentils, broth, onion, carrot, garlic, tomato paste, cumin and cayenne and bring to a boil over high heat. Lower heat and simmer, uncovered, until vegetables and very tender and lentils soften, about 25 minutes.
Remove the pot from the heat and use an immersion blender to blend the soup until it is creamy but with some texture left. Add salt and serve with lemon wedges and a garnish of mint and sumac, if desired.
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I can’t wait to try this! Perfect fall soup situation.
Looks delicious. This is my favorite soup as a Turk
nice to see it here.
Looks delicious.
nice to see it here.
This is my favorite soup as a Turk