The lentil soup, warm, nutritious, and enveloping: perfect for cold evenings and rich in plant proteins.
The lentils cook directly with the vegetables, giving a rustic and natural flavor, ideal as a first course or as a light main dish.
As I have already written in other recipes, I love legumes and their use in cooking.
Soups are a boon for the numerous beneficial properties they contain.
My grandma used to prepare them for me in every way and today thanks to my mom, I am acquiring all the secrets to make them.
The recipe I want to share with you today is one of my favorites. Simple to make and above all genuine.
The “traditional” soups of Bricciola’s home, are really homemade and delicious.
We never enrich them with added fats like bacon or rind, it would be too easy to make a dish taste good.
My hard task in the kitchen or rather my lifestyle that I also support in the blog, is to cook healthy but with lots of FLAVOR.
If you love legumes, check out these other recipes right below:
- Difficulty: Easy
- Cost: Inexpensive
- Preparation time: 20 Minutes
- Portions: 2 People
- Cooking methods: Stovetop
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: All seasons, Fall, Winter
Ingredients
Let’s see the ingredients we need.
- 1 carrot
- 1 onion
- celery (a few leaves)
- 1 clove garlic
- basil (a few leaves 6/7)
- parsley (a few sprigs chopped)
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste
- to taste fine salt
- to taste sugar (a pinch)
- 24 oz water (hot)
- 1 potato
- 1 cup lentils
- to taste pasta (whichever you prefer)
- 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Tools
- 1 Saucepan
- 1 Knife
- 1 Strainer
Steps
Let’s see how to proceed to make our delicious soup.
Take a saucepan and pour in the oil, the sliced carrots, the onion, the celery leaves, the garlic clove in pieces, the basil leaves, the parsley, and the tomato paste.
Add salt and a pinch of sugar. Let all these ingredients soften over low heat.
In the meantime, take the dry lentils, wash them thoroughly followed by visual inspection, and let them drain.
Pour the lentils into the saucepan and mix well with the ingredients already inside.
After a few minutes, add the hot water and a potato cut into 4 and let it cook.
When the lentils are cooked, remove the potato and mash it with a fork, then add the puree back into the pot.
This potato trick will make everything creamier.
Check the remaining water in the saucepan, because if you need to add the pasta now, if the liquid has evaporated too much, you’ll need to add more to cook it.
Make sure if you top up, it is hot.
You decide what final consistency to give to the soup. I prefer it with a little more liquid but if you want it drier, adjust accordingly.
All that’s left is to wish you Bon Appetit
How to store lentil soup
If there’s leftover lentil soup, let it cool to room temperature, but not for more than 1-2 hours to avoid bacterial growth.
Use glass or food-grade plastic containers, tightly closed to avoid odors and contamination.
It’s better to portion it into multiple containers: that way you only thaw or reheat what you need.
The soup keeps in the fridge for 2-3 days.
Place it on the middle shelf, where the temperature is more stable.
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