Full of chunky vegetable goodness
Is it winter again?
Funny question, but yesterday we woke up to a white morning. Everything was covered in snow, even the rooftops. For a moment I thought it was Christmas. The trees and lawns looked beautiful, but this was only short-lived. As the day wore on, the snow slowly melted. It was really sad to see it go…
Because of that false alarm, I decided to make some winter soup. I made this soup several times during winter, because it’s so filling and sort of moves me off the radar of meat. But as I have mentioned before, I’m such a carnivore, I sneaked in some smoked bacon at the start of the cooking. I love the smell of cooking bacon, (who doesn’t?) and it enhances the flavour of the soup. (I have to justify why I always sneak in some meaty ingredient when I am cooking).
Sorry for being so rude, and talking about me, me, me, without taking you into consideration. How was your week? And what about your weekend? I hope everything was great for you; if it wasn’t then I hope at least the coming week will be better or even awesome for you.
Now back to the soup. It’s a very interesting soup with lots of leek, yum! I love leek, and I hope you do too; fresh tomatoes, (if you feel lazy, just throw in some canned chunk tomatoes); swede (I didn’t have any left over) carrots, turnips and sweet potatoes. The main ingredients here are lentils, leek, onions and tomatoes; the rest is left to your imagination. I virtually collected all the left over vegetables from previous cooking and I even added some Kale. As I mentioned before, the beauty of ‘from the scratch cooking’ is, you can control what you add to your soup and adjust everything according to your palate and moods. And this soup can be made outside winter. I hope you enjoy eating the soup, yes eating because it’s full chunky vegetable goodness!
Please always make sure you assemble all ingredients before you start cooking.
Wash leek thoroughly under running water.
Slice stalks lengthwise, then slice each half thinly.
Transfer to a bowl of cold water, swish around to get rid of any left-over dirt.
Heat the olive oil in a large pan.
Fry the bacon until lightly browned.
Add the onions and leek and gently sauté for 5 minutes.
Add lentils, carrot, turnips, sweet potatoes.
Continue to sauté for another 5 minutes.
Add stock, tomato paste, chopped tomatoes and bay leaves and bring to the boil.
Cover the pan, reduce heat and simmer gently for 20 minutes or until vegetables are cooked.
I basically used left over vegetables from previous cooking, so I added Kale and continued to simmer for another 5 minutes (You can add shredded spinach or cabbage if you like), and grated rind and juice of orange if using, at this point. . Adjust seasoning, add more stock if soup is too thick, and sprinkle with freshly chopped parsley or cilantro, if preferred and discard the bay leaves. Serve immediately, with crusty bread.
The soup should be served immediately, otherwise the lentil will continue to soak up the stock and it will become too thick and mushy.
I enjoyed the soup and just ate it as a complete meal, followed by a dessert.
Winter Lentil Vegetabel Soup
Preparation time: 20 minutes; Cooking time: 40 minutes; Serves: 4-6
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil or other of your choice
- 75g (3oz) streaky bacon, trimmed and chopped into small pieces (optional)
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 2 stalks leeks, trimmed, washed thoroughly and sliced
- 100g (½ cup, 4oz) red lentils, washed thoroughly
- I medium carrot peeled and cut into cubes
- 100g (4oz) turnips peeled and cubes
- 100g (4oz) sweet potatoes peeled and cut into cubes
- 750-1000ml (3-4 cups, 25-33fl oz) vegetable or chicken stock
- 30ml (2 tablespoons) tomato paste, blended with 2 tablespoons of water
- 400g (14oz) ripe tomatoes, washed, skinned, deseeded and chopped (3 large) or a 540ml (19oz) can of chunk tomatoes
- 2 bay leaves
- Grated rind and juice of 1 small orange (optional)
- 100g (4oz) kale shredded or spinach or cabbage (optional)
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 1 tablespoon freshly chopped parsley or cilantro (coriander), if preferred
Instructions
- Heat oil in a large pan. Fry bacon until lightly browned, add onions and leek and gently sauté for 5 minutes.
- Add lentils, carrots, turnips, and sweet potatoes, continue to sauté for a further 5 minutes.
- Add 750ml (3 cups) stock, tomato paste, chopped tomatoes and bay leaves, Bring to the boil, cover pan, reduce heat and simmer gently for 20 minutes or until vegetables are soft.
- Stir in kale (if using) and grated rind and juice of the orange, continue simmering for a further 5 minutes.
- Adjust seasoning, sprinkle with freshly chopped parsley or cilantro (coriander) if preferred, discard bay leaves, and serve immediately with crusty bread. Add more stock if it’s too thick.
- If preferred, soup can be blended until smooth. Add a little stock to help in blending. Reheat until piping hot.
- You can use left over vegetables of your choice.
Points to note:
- I used red split lentils which cook in 10-12 minutes, if you use another type of lentils, you will need to adjust the time accordingly.
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I like this wonderful soup, thanks for the recipe 🙂
Magi
Thanks for liking the soup. I love it too. And thanks for the many likes!!! Have a wonderful week!
This soup looks perfect for my taste… I’ll certainly be trying it out when the weather gets cooler around here. Thanks for stopping by my blog and I look forward to reading more of yours!!
Thanks for visiting. I enjoyed the soup during winter, as a complete meal. I also look forward to seeing you more often!!!
This is definitely a keeper! I think I’ll be able to get my toddler to eat some veggies with this soup!
Thanks for stopping by and for liking my soup, tomorrow I shall be making some soup so thats a good sign. My local library doesn’t have the documentary, but happy watching. Hope to see you again!
Will try this minus bacon!! Yummy!
Like I said before, from scratch cooking means you can add or minus ingredients to suit your moods and palate. That’s what cooking is all about. Enjoy the soup if you do make it. Have a great week!
I definitely will try to make this soup.
If you ever do, please give me a shout. Vielen Dank!
I surely will.
Appears to be a wholesome soup. But to me it appears too thick. I guess one would be able to make it lighter and with lesser ingredients.
Shakti
That is why it’s called a Winter Soup, the whole point of a winter soup is to have a wholesome soup that can be eaten as a meal, so they tend to be full of ingredients and are also thick. Lighter soups are eaten in Summer. But when cooking you can always adjust your food to suit your palate and likings. Thank you for stopping by. I hope you will be a frequent visitor here. Perhaps I shall learn more about Muscat, Oman and leadership and Psychology from you too. Kind regards to your wonderful family.
omg…I think I might be the sole person on the planet who does not like bacon lol. I have a lot of friends who taunt me with bacon stories lol.
As usual…that looked incredibly yummy. I mean…MMMmmmm MMMmmmm yummers nod nods.
You are absolutely right, you are the one person in the whole universe who doesn’t like bacon, the rest of us do. I love pork, so I love bacon, I just control the amount I eat, but I love it. Thanks for stopping by. I always look forward to seeing you. Have a wonderful week!
Well ok … some bacon is good … but I think the following would be TOTALLY going overboard!
Wow, chocolate coated with sprinkles. Should i say its creative or overboard or what should i say. I’m not over the top about bacon, but I like it. Thanks, Katie.
Looks so good and I totally love this. Could happily have this all week!
Thank you. I had this many times in winter. I have been to Bento Days, thank you for reminding me about ‘Earth Day” Have a great week!
Soooo beautiful/colourful. Like autumn leaves in April!
You certainly have a way with words, are you a poet or writer? The colour is indeed beautiful, like autumn leaves (I like that) but it also tastes so delicious. Thanks for stopping by and for leaving me a note. Have a pleasant week!
I am a writer in the making! ( I hope). Taking creative writing at University, so thanks for the comment on my comment! Made my day!
Ha ha, nice to see you again after a bit of silence, Thanks so much and have a lovely weekend!
Like you I’d happily add bacon to most things. The soup looks lovely- I could have done with a hearty bowl of that today after a very wet and cold couple of days fell walking. Roll on summer…..
Ha ha that makes three of us, you, me and Diana from Willamette Food Adventures, so I don’t feel guilty anymore about sneaking in bacon in my soups even if I’m supposed to be cooking vegetarian. Thanks so much for stopping by, please add me on your Monday mailing list…is the bread mailed out??
This looks so yummy! I can’t wait to try making a veggie version (without the bacon!) of it. Thanks for checking out Life Is Like A Dumpling!
Hi Gen and thanks for stopping by. I’m always torn on whether to include that bacon or not, for the sake of vegetarians, but I guess I shall just add optional in brackets to take care of that. I do love the bacon, it give a nice smoky taste. Thanks I saw the beetroot pasta, colour looks amazing!!!
That bread looks amazing, too. Where did you get it?
I am always thinking about you, thank you for stopping by. The bread is from Zehrs, yes good old Zehrs, and tastes really good. How did the Poppy Seed Cake go? And thank you so much for your friendship and support. I really appreciate!!! I made some Chocolate Banana Muffins two days ago, easy to make but tastes awesome. I must send you the recipe because it will be a while before I can post them.
Here autumn is back all of a sudden… and we’ll have a peas soup tonight!
Haha I want to see your pea soup recipe. We used to eat that a lot in the Netherlands during winter, and we used to sneak in big fat smoked sausages in the soup. The smokiness of the sausages made the soup taste soo good, unbelievable!!
I use lentils a lot. Good protein; very filling. If leftovers, I try to store them separately from the rest of the soup so they don’t get mushy. This works well if you add the lentils at serving time only to the amount of soup that will actually be consumed.
I’m glad to know there is someone who eat lentils a lot, like me! I have three frozen batches of yellow dal in the freezer right now. I like the idea of adding the dal at serving time as suggested, I shall be doing that. Thank you for exchanging ideas!!!! Have a pleasant week!
I love the idea of adding orange juice and rind, it must smell amazing!
It does smell amazing and tastes amazing too. That pear dessert sounds really tasty. I shall be trying it!!!
Looks super yummy! I know what you mean about the smell of cooking bacon. There’s a couple of fast food restaurants on the route the dog and I take for our walk. Usually no problem, but one of them was cooking bacon today, the smell was so overpowering! I wanted to come home and cook some right away but used all my willpower to have a smoothie instead. LOL
Omg I am happy there is someone out there who loves the smell of cooking bacon, that makes the two of us at least. Nice to know that you managed to have a smoothie instead! I must get that same will power, then perhaps I shall stop sneaking in meat into everything. I just saw your broccoli salad with cashew nuts, great idea, I must try that one!