Creamy lentil soup

Name: Creamy lentil soup
Yield: 4 people
Ingredients: 500 ml cooking cream; 2 carrots; 1 potato; 4 tbsp olive oil; 2 pepper; 500 g red lentils; 500 ml chicken broth; 1 pinch salt; 1 slice flatbread; 240 ml vegetable oil

An easy red lentil soup with potato, carrot, and bell pepper may make for a hearty and filling main course or a delectable entrée if served in smaller servings. No matter how you serve it, its creamy consistency makes eating it a delightful experience. The crispy, perfectly fried, and golden flatbread perfects this sweet, savoury, and filling carrot and lentil soup and makes it an absolute must-try for Ramadan.

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Instructions

Cut potatoes and carrots into small pieces.
Put peppers in a baking tray, top with some olive oil, bake for five minutes, and cut it into small pieces.
In a pan, add the rest of the olive oil, potatoes, carrots, peppers, lentils, salt, and chicken broth, stir, and leave to simmer on low heat.
Cut bread into small pieces and fry in vegetable oil in a pan until golden.
Add cooking cream to the soup and stir well.
Put the soup in a blender and pulse until it is smooth and creamy.
Pour into a bowl and add fried bread on top.

Enjoy!

Questions about creamy lentil soup

Creamy lentil soup is a wonderful addition to any iftar meal. Try our recipe for red lentil soup to discover exactly why! To learn more about it, read our answers to the most frequently asked questions below.

What is creamy lentil soup?

A creamy red lentil soup features lentils as one of its main ingredients. Popular across many cuisines, it may be prepared with either red, brown, green, yellow, or black lentils or, of course, a mix of different types. The dish is usually made with a selection of different vegetables like potato, carrot, bell pepper, onion, tomato, pumpkin, and celery or with meat like chicken. Throughout the Middle East, it is usually puréed to create a creamy lentil soup that may be served with fresh or crunchy toppings like chopped herbs, croutons, or fried flatbread.

How to make creamy lentil soup?

Making creamy lentil soup from scratch is neither difficult nor time-consuming. To prepare it, cut the potatoes and carrots into small chunks and roast the oil-covered bell peppers and cut them into pieces before transferring them as well as the other vegetables and lentils to a saucepan. Add the chicken broth and let it cook. As it simmers, use the time to fry the flatbread to golden perfection in oil. Then add the cooking cream, blend it all until smooth, and season to taste. Serve the creamy lentil soup with crispy, fried flatbread.

How long does creamy lentil soup last in the fridge?

Creamy lentil soup may be refrigerated for up to 5 days. It may, as such, be prepared well in advance and reheated when you wish to enjoy it. After cooking it, allow for it to cool before transferring it to one or more airtight containers. To reheat it, warm it either at medium heat in a saucepan or a microwave-safe bowl. While the latter may be quicker, the former option better retains the creamy lentil soup's flavours.

Can you freeze creamy lentil soup?

Creamy lentil soup may be frozen for up to 4-5 months. However, it is best to do so before adding the cooking cream as soups with a milk or cream base tend to separate when frozen. As such, it is better to add the cooking cream after reheating it slowly on your stovetop at low to medium heat after thawing it. Remember to always allow it to cool before transferring it to airtight containers and to leave room for the liquid to expand slightly as it freezes.

How to thicken creamy lentil soup?

This carrot and lentil soup with cooking cream is naturally quite thick but if you want to thicken it further, you can add some microwaved and blended cashew nuts before blending it. This will make its consistency thicker and add a lovely nutty flavour. You can, of course, also use cornflour. The reason creamy lentil soup is already quite thick is that the cream and the potatoes  help thicken it considerably.

Ingredients

Creamy lentil soup:

Cooking cream	500 ml
Carrots	2
Potato	1
Olive oil	4 tbsp
Pepper	2
Red lentils	500 g
Chicken broth	500 ml
Salt	1 pinch

Fried flatbread:

Flatbread	1 slice
Vegetable oil	240 ml

Simple red lentil soup with cream

Creamy lentil soup is a true Ramadan classic. Breaking the fast with hot soups makes you slow down and enjoy the iftar meal without eating too much, or too fast. As a bonus, this dish is simply incredibly tasty and has a rich texture. Though red lentils have a sweet, earthy, and nutty flavour, they are quite mild-tasting. As such, pairing them with a selection of flavourful vegetables is a brilliant idea.

With carrots, potatoes, and roasted pepper

A carrot and lentil soup with starchy potatoes and roasted pepper has a deliciously thick consistency. Though the mild-tasting potatoes do not add much flavour, they are important for ensuring a creamy texture. Carrots and peppers, on the other hand, add quite a lot of flavour. The former adds a delightful sweetness that perfectly balances the savoury, salty chicken stock on which the dish is based. As such, a carrot and lentil soup is sweet and earthy, balanced by the roasted flavours and mild potatoes.

Roasting peppers before adding them to soups like this mild and sweet carrot and lentil soup brings out their flavour. Charring the skin caramelises some of the sugar it contains which heightens the peppers' sweetness while also giving them subtle, smoky notes. These undertones serve to give this creamy lentil soup its complex flavour profile.

In our collection of vegetable soups, we also have great recipes for creamy mushroom soup and creamy tomato and vegetable soup that are just as filling and delicious. If you are in the market for meat-based ones, we recommend this tasty cream of chicken soup recipe.

Serve with fried flatbread on the side

If you have ever wondered what to eat with lentil soup, fried flatbread is a great choice. The combination of creamy lentil soup and crispy bread is perfect. This crunchy topping is incredibly easy to make fresh as it is just flatbread cut into small pieces and fried in heated vegetable oil until perfectly golden brown.

While you can, of course, use regular, plain flatbread to make these crispy treats, sprinkling the freshly fried pieces of bread with spices like nutty and savoury Za'atar or lemony, tangy sumac is also very tasty.

Experiment with a spicy red lentil soup

Try mixing it up with warm spices like earthy cumin, woody turmeric, zingy ginger, or pungent, sweet-spicy cinnamon. You can also add a bay leaf to the dish as it cooks and remove it before blending it. This will add another layer of flavour and lighten the hearty, creamy lentil soup.

For a slightly different take, try a spicy red lentil soup by adding hot chilli peppers in with the regular peppers as you roast them. This will bring a different kind of heat to the dish that may want to make you serve it with some cold, thick cream drizzled on top to temper the spice.

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