It’s Friday in Lent again, and lo and behold, I’m posting another soup. This one is so delicious I don’t have pictures for you–we were in a hurry, so I intended to take a picture of a bowl of the leftovers. Unfortunately, there weren’t any! Well, I suppose you could consider that fortunate, as it means three people polished off a single batch of this recipe. Now, if you weren’t quite so hungry or you had more side dishes (I just served it with a loaf of artisan garlic bread: a loaf with garlic cloves baked into it rather than traditional garlic bread) it could serve 4-6 people (especially if some of them are small children).

As I indicate below, I made this recipe with red lentils, and I liked the almost creamy texture that I got. However, you could almost certainly make it with the more commonly found green lentils and have it turn out pretty well. Yellow lentils would also probably work fine, as they are quite similar to red lentils in how they cook up.

Without further ado, lentil soup!

Garlic-Cumin Lentil Soup

Ingredients:

• 2 TBS olive oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 3/4 cups red lentils
• 8 cups vegetable broth
• 1 tsp salt
• black pepper to taste
• 2 TBS fresh lemon juice

Directions:

1. Heat the olive oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. Once hot, add the onion and garlic and sautee for about 5 minutes, unitl the onion becomes a little translucent.

2. Add the cumin and cook another minute to combine.

3. Add the lentils, broth, salt, and pepper. Bring to a simmering boil and cook for 20-30 minutes, until the lentils are soft and beginning to break down. Add some water if your soup needs thinning, but I didn’t need to.

4. Stir in the lemon juice. Turn off the heat/take soup off of heat.

5. Ladle soup into bowls and serve. You can drizzle a little extra olive oil on top, if you want. It can be nice :D. Enjoy!