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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.
omg! delicious as always. love this! i always tell people you basically taught me how to cook. thank you <3
i didn’t have any tomato paste, so i used gochujang instead- it was nice! to elaborate on the above, i honestly didn’t cook all that much besides frozen dinners and unremarkable, poorly-seasoned stir-fries until i made a few of your recipes from the site and got a copy of your indian kitchen cookbook, which i always recommend to friends and family. i’m not a vegan or even a vegetarian, but thanks to you i definitely eat a lot of healthy, flavorful plant-based meals. thank you so much!!
gochuchang – exceelent sub for tom. paste!! that’s great bobby – so happy to hear- keep it up!
wow – I love that
I followed the recipe exactly. It was so flavorful and way better than from a restaurant!
Tastes yumm, cheers for a good soup 🙂
I rarely find the hype around most recipes justified, once I make them myself. However, this time I must echo previous reviewers and say that this soup is really good. My problem with soups, most often, is that they lack flavor. Not this bowl of goodness, na-ah. This one is packed with flavor, really easy to make, and done in no time. For people who are not fans of mint in their savory dishes (like me), you might want to skip it in this recipe. I made it with, and it does add a lot, but it’s still mint, and therefore pretty dominant. And the soup is flavorful enough to withstand that “blow”. More than enough. Way to go, Richa. Please add more soup recipes soon! (:
Love this easy and fool proof soup, I’ve made it at least 3 times! I appreciate that you use such little oil but the recipes still turn out amazing!!
hi! do i need to pre-soak the lentils?
thanks for your question – no
Perfect as usual!
Richa, you’ve made being vegan so much easier and I truly don’t think I would have been successful without you <3
We’re on a vegan alkaline diet for skin and this is thr best soup we’ve had so far even without the tomatoes. I’m lucky enough to live in an area with many Turkish restaurants. This soup is spot on.
who needs tomatoes anyways?! haha, thank you. glad that you enjoyed it!
I am new to this blog and made this recipe for dinner last night. It was so delicious that hubby and I were practically licking our bowls clean! I followed the recipe exactly as written and we were so pleased with the outcome. Thanks so much for sharing your creations here 🙂 I can’t wait to try more of your recipes!
My sister sent me this and said it was amazing. She was right! Made it last night and can’t believe such a simple recipe can taste so delicious. Thank you!
So glad you enjoyed it!