Turkish Flavours Give Red Lentil Soup a Whole New Jam

I am not trying to reinvent the wheel here, or anything, but a friend made Middle Eastern Lentil Soup and so I decided to get some going as well. This is a soup I cook all the time and it's one of my favourite comfort foods but today, it's humid and dark and rainy and I need something with a bit more kick to it.

I made my regular recipe, more or less but swapped out the spices for my favourite Turkish chili flakes, added a drizzle of my Crispy Garlic Chili Oil because that always makes everything better and a mound of my crispy fried shallots or onions that I always have in the pantry. They are tasty and easy and cheap and you can get them in any type of Asian grocery store. Wow, that's a lot of crispy things going on.

Urfa Biber

Maras

Both are available online if you aren't lucky enough to have a Turkish grocery shop nearbye. I put them in everything and go through an alarming amount of them. Thankfully, I buy big jars of them at the Turkish store so I never run out. These two spices with olive oil, garlic, a bit of salt on boneless, skinless chicken thighs in the airfryer??? Get out of town. Make the oil while the soup cooks.

Spicy Red Lentil Soup with Crispy Garlic Oil

serves 4-6

Ingredients: 

2 tbls olive oil 1 red onion, finely diced 

1 carrot, finely diced 

1 parsnip, finely diced 

5 red baby potatoes, finely diced 

1 cup red lentils, rinsed 

1 clove garlic, chopped or smashed 

1 tsp of Turkish Maras chili flake (or Aleppo will work)

1.5 tsp of Turkish Urfa Biber chili flake (black chili) 

1 tsp of cumin 

7 cups of water 

2 tsp sodium reduced BTB (Better Than Bouillon is my fave) chicken broth base

1 tsp kosher salt

 juice of 1 lemon 

to serve

*Crispy Garlic Chili Oil and crispy fried shallots, chopped parsley and more lemon if desired

*Crispy Garlic Chili Oil

1/4 cup olive oil

3 or 4 cloves of garlic sliced very thinly

1 tbls Maras or Aleppo pepper

1 tbls Urfa Biber Chili flake

1/4 tsp kosher salt

Heat the oil over medium heat in a small pan and cook the garlic slices until they are just turning golden. Pour the garlic and oil into a heatproof bowl to cool for a minute or two before stirring in the chili and salt. Set aside. Can be stored in the fridge for weeks.

 

Instructions:

Heat the olive oil in a soup pot over medium high heat and sauté the onion, carrot, parsnip and potatoes for about 5 or 6 minutes, until the onions have softened, stirring occasionally. Add in both chili flake and cumin and cook another couple of minutes until fragrant.

Throw in the rinsed lentils and garlic, stirring them until mixed in and then add the water, the BTB, salt and lemon juice.
Bring to a boil and then turn down the heat and simmer lightly for about 30 minutes. Use an immersion blender to puree at least half of the soup - a bit of texture is nice.

To serve, ladle into bowls, top with a good drizzle of the crispy chili oil (make sure everyone gets a few slices of crispy garlic, a small mound of crispy shallots and a scattering of parsely.