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Easy Turkish Red Lentil Soup with carrots, turkish spices, mint. Easy weeknight meal. Vegan Gluten-free Soyfree Recipe.Jump to Recipe
Soups are a great appetizer or a meal by itself served with a salad or flatbread. And Red lentils are a definite favorite in the house. Light, quick and versatile. No waiting for the beans to soak and cook.
Onions and garlic are cooked until translucent. Then the carrots and other veggies, spices are added and toasted, hen mint, tomato, lentils and water or broth and done. Once the lentils are cooked, blend the soup carefully and serve with croutons, cucumber, flatbread or a side salad. The soup tastes amazing unblended as well and can be served so.
More Soups from the blog
- Mushroom Chickpea Soup
- Curried butternut squash soup
- Chard Mushroom Shallot Pasta soup
- Chipotle corn Chowder
- Moroccan lentil soup
- Cream of Mushroom Soup
This recipe is inspired by a mix of recipes from allrecipes.com and other sites and have evolved based on my personal preference.
Cook the onions, garlic until translucent. Add the carrots, spices and mix in. Add lentils and water and cook until lentils are tender.
Serve the soup as is, or blend and serve.
Turkish Red Lentil Soup
Ingredients
- 1 tsp oil
- 3/4 cup onion, chopped
- 3 cloves of garlic, chopped
- 1/3 cup chopped carrots, 4 baby carrot or 1 medium carrot
- 1/2 tsp ground cumin
- 1/2 tsp paprika
- 1/2 tsp dried oregano
- 1/4 tsp or more black pepper
- 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
- 1 tomato chopped
- 1-2 tbsp tomato paste or ketchup
- 1 tbsp chopped fresh mint leaves, or use 1/2 tsp dried mint
- 1/2 cup red lentils
- 2 1/2 cups to 3 water or vegetable broth
- 1/2-3/4 tsp salt or more salt
- red pepper flakes, mint, lemon juice and olive oil for garnish
Instructions
- Heat oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add onions, garlic and pinch of salt and cook until translucent. 5 minutes.
- Add the carrots and the spices and mix well. You can also add in a good pinch of cinnamon for variation. Cook for 2 minutes.
- Add the tomato, tomato ketchup and mint and mix and cook for 2 minutes. You can add some veggies and greens veggies at this point.
- Add the red lentils, water and salt and mix. Partially cover and cook for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to medium-low and continue to simmer for a few more minutes until the lentils are tender to preference. Taste and adjust salt and spice and mix in. Add more water if needed.
- Cool slightly and blend with an immersion blender or regular blender(carefully). Serve in bowls with a garnish pepper flakes, lemon juice, a few drops of olive oil and chopped fresh mint(optional). Serve with croutons or flatbread of choice or a side salad.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
I have been travelling for the past 2 weeks and now see I have a bunch of recipes to catch-up on! This looks terrific!! Thank you.
I love how quickly this soup came together and that it consists primarily of pantry staples. And so tasty! I love the spices and was impressed how flavorful it turned out without broth. I bought beets today and didn’t want the tops to go to waste so I cooked/blended in the beet shoots and then wilted the leaves in at the end. This went nicely over bulgur. Many thanks for another great recipe!
awesome!
Pulses are also a huge favorite in my house. I love lentils but I’ve never tried red lentils! Lentil soup is such a great dish. You can really add anything you’d like in it!
I made this last night! It was absolutely delicious.. easy recipe and had almost everything in the pantry except for the mint. Can’t wait to try out more of your recipes! Thank you for sharing!
Awesome!
Omg! My favorite soup!!
Really an amazing tasting soup, bursting with levels of flavor.
Thank you Elizabeth!!
Is there a different lentil I can use? I don’t usually have masoor dal at home
mung dal? it will need another 10 mins of cooking time.
I do have that! 🙂 Thank you for the quick reply, I’ll be trying this soon. I’ll make sure to allow the additional time for cooking
Great soup! Even better today (day two). I didn’t blend and added a few greens as you suggested. Fast, easy, excellent!! I particularly enjoy not needing to double up on spices when I cook from your recipes. Thank you so much.
Thats awesome!! Also try it blended some time. It changes the flavors and experience!
Can’t wait to try this! Looks delicious ????
It’s got 7 more minutes to go! My house now smells amazing! Thank you!
Awesome!