Soups serve a lot of functions in our meals: eaten before a meal they prepare your stomach for an upcoming load of food to be processed; after a long weekend night out they help you to relieve your hunger and lessen the effects of alcohol, or they make a fast and healthy breakfast on a cold winter morning. Certain soups are better for some certain functions, but this Turkish lentil soup recipe is suitable for all these functions.
I remember my mother cooking soup whenever someone in the family had a cold or sore throat. She usually made something with home boiled chicken stock and always commented on how unhealthy those stock cubes were. Now I am the one in mother shoes and my son was diagnosed pharyngitis yesterday. As you can guess, I decided on making a soup. There was some frozen chicken stock in the freezer and I decided to make Turkish lentil soup.
Preparing this soup is very easy. You just have to boil 1 lt. water, add all the ingredients, and boil for 1 hour on low heat. The topping is not a must, but it is not tiring either. Melting the butter, adding the paprika and stirring a few times take almost no time.
I always prefer to have my soup really hot, but if you have a sore throat or pharyngitis, it should be warm. Chicken stock and lentil are packed with a lot of protein and minerals, so they are really good at fighting simple symptoms of common cold and the flu. Squeezing a quarter lemon adds even more vitamins and adds a fresh flavor to your soup.
I used red ones for my Turkish lentil soup recipe, but I think there are no rules for that. You can try Turkish yellow lentil soup or cook it with the green ones. There is one important point if you will not serve it immediately: you should add some water before heating it, or it will have a very thick texture. This is an economical, healthy and delicious soup that everybody will ask for one more bowl.
Serves 2
Turkish Lentil Soup. A healthy and delicious soup recipe which costs almost nothing!
10 minPrep Time
1 hrCook Time
1 hr, 10 Total Time
Save Recipe
Ingredients
- ½ lt water
- ½ lt chicken stock
- 1 cup finely chopped onion
- ¼ cup red lentil
- 1/8 cup rice
- 1/8 cup fine bulgur
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1/8 cup olive oil
- 1 tbsp butter
- 1 tsp paprika
Instructions
- Add all the ingredients into boiling water
- Cook for 1 hour on low heat.
- Stir at 30th and 45th minutes
- Serve hot by adding the topping
- Melt the butter in a small pan
- Add the paprika and stir until homogeneously combined
Katy Laird says
Your soup looks amazing- I get it at every Turkish restaurant I go to, and I’d love it make it at home.
I just had a question- when you were talking about the soup you mentioned butter and paprika, but in the ingredient list it’s butter and pepperoni.
Hi Katy, thanks a lot for your comment. Of course there is no pepperoni in this soup. I should have written paprika, but somehow I wrote it that way. Now it’s Ok.