Damien Miller's weblog

I have been trying to improve my (terrible) cooking skills recently, by cooking some very basic recipes until I get them right. So far the only one that has worked first time is the following recipe for red lentil soup. My attempts at making carrot cake have turned out tasty, but rather too dense, and it took a couple of attempts and lots of wasted eggs before I could reliably make Hollandaise sauce (tip: use a very low heat when adding the egg yolks to the butter).

This recipe makes enough lentil soup to feed a small army, but I prefer to make bulk soup because it freezes so well. The recipe does scale very well, so you might want to simply divide by 4 or 5 if you are only cooking for a few people. It is quite a hearty soup - very good for this cold winter.

Ingredients

• 4 large brown onions
• 1Kg carrots
• 5 cups red lentils
• 1.5 tablespoons turmeric
• 1/3rd cup olive oil
• 4 litres vegetable stock
• 1 litre water

Instructions

1. Chop onions finely, add to pan with olive oil and cook until soft
2. Add tumeric and stir through
3. Place the water and stock in a large pot, add the cooked onions and place on a high heat
4. Chop carrots finely
5. If you have any random vegetables lying at the bottom of the fridge, this is a good time to get rid of them - chop them up
6. Wash the lentils (wait until you are ready to add them to the stock, otherwise they will become sticky and clump at the bottom of the pot)
7. Once stock is gently boiling, add carrots, washed lentils and whatever you found at in your fridge
8. Boil until carrots are soft and the soup has thickened
9. Add salt to taste
10. Serve with natural yoghurt and Italian parsley

posted at: 12:36 | path: /cooking | permanent link