Can’t remember where I ran across the basics of a lentil soup. but after some variation experiments, I have what I think is a reasonable foundation for further experimentation.

Ingredients

note: to get a nice color, all the vegetables are selected for consistent color. flavor variations abound, but for the purposes of this particular recipe I’ve chosen orange as the target color and chose the ingredients accordingly. It tastes very good with other selections, but the final visual might be a bit murky if you mix things up a bit. My first experiment was with a purple potato and green lentils. It was quite tasty, but the color was… well… you could have used it for a good sick joke…

You can pretty much make the whole thing in one good pot. providing it can hold everything comfortably. There’s a quart of stock and yams are large, so something larger than a gallon capacity should be comfortable. given the sauté steps, you might want something wider than it is tall. When you’re done, if you want, you can run the results through a blender, but that is optional. sometimes a bit of texture is nice.

• Half an onion, diced. Yellow is what I’ve used, the red onion’s pigment leans a little cold so I might avoid them in this case.
• Garlic, minced or crushed, to taste. 3-4 cloves is a good starting point
• One bell pepper, diced. Orange is the appropriate one for this mixture, though red or yellow would work fine.
• One yam, diced. the orange sweet potato type. have made this with a purple potato, a white sweet potato, all good. tastes different, but depending on how you choose to season things…
• 1 cup red lentils. you can rinse them if you like. Red lentils tend to cook faster, so if you use a different color, you may need to adjust your expectations of dinner time…
• About a quart of stock. your choice as far as type. My last attempt was a vegetable stock and the result would be acceptable to a vegan. I used “Better than Bullion” with very nice results. subbing a can of coconut milk for some of the stock might be an interesting variation. I haven’t tried that yet, but if your spice mixture leans ‘curry’ it could be very good I think.
• 1/4 cup of tomato paste
• Dried spices. I used Paprika, Coriander and Cumin. (Plus the usual western addition of black pepper and some salt.) I used about a teaspoon of paprika and about 1/2 tsp of everything else. your soup, your choice. but this is supposed to be warming, so just enough heat to be noticeable.

Steps

1. In a stew pot of some sort, over a medium heat, add some oil, and when hot sauté the onions until translucent. stirring occasionally.
2. Add the bell pepper and cook to soften.
3. Add garlic and stir to just cook it a bit. you don’t want it to brown, but you do want it to release. side note, if at any time it looks like things are about to burn, add a little bit of the stock to deglaze things a little.
4. Move everything to the side of the pot and add the spices. Let them toast a bit
5. Add the tomato paste and let it cook a bit. you should be able to smell it when it becomes cooked.
6. Dump in the yam/potato and lentils
7. Add the rest of the stock and bring to a boil
8. Lower the temperature to low and let simmer until the potato and lentils are cooked through.
9. If it seems to be getting too thick, add a bit of water.
10. After about 30-40 minutes, turn off the heat and let it cool a bit.
11. optional: run it through a blender until smooth. add water until it is the desired consistency. it is a pretty starchy soup so it will want to thicken as it cools, though when you reheat later it will thin out a bit.