While making up my menu plan, and in an attempt to use up some of what I have in my pantry, I noticed that I had two bags of lentils. I’ve had them for a while now, so I figured: use ’em or lose ’em. I knew I wanted to do a soup with them, so I start my search for a new soup recipe to try. I wanted something low in fat and meatless — not that we don’t eat meat, but we are eating less meat lately.
I ended up deciding to make Ina Garten’s Lentil Vegetable Soup. It made a HUGE batch. Of course, I did 2 lbs of lentils, but I realized that even 1 pound would have made a lot. So, a lot of soup for not much money. It’s hearty and DELICIOUS! The next day David and I also had it for lunch (it was even better the second day).
The only negative – there was a LOT of chopping, but it was well worth it.
I create the recipe exactly as listed with a few exceptions:
- I used brown lentils (rather than French green)
- I used half of the olive oil for cooking the vegetables
- I added the red wine vinegar, which we really liked the kick that it gave the soup. If you aren’t sure if you will like it, I would suggest adding just half and tasting the soup before adding the other half.
- We did not drizzle olive oil on top of our soup
- Can be made vegetarian by using vegetable stock rather than chicken
WW Points: 4 Points+ for 1 cup (not including if you top with Parmesan cheese)
You can find this Lentil Vegetable Soup recipe here.
Barbara Hake says
Excellent recipe. Used only 2 sweet onions and no leeks (used what I had in pantry)