How to Make Easy Red Lentil Soup with North African Spices

[Music] lentils come in a rainbow of colors from the bluish-looking dupi lentils down to green and red and even white lentils but the interesting thing about the red lentils is that their skins have been removed see here if you take a brown lentil and you crack open the outer shell you see that red lentil center starting to shine through so without their skins the red lentils are able to cook through more quickly and break down to a creamy consistency that's perfect for soup and aaron's here to show us how it's done i am julie red lentil soup is one of my all-time favorite recipes and this recipe in particular is super easy if you've never cooked lentils before red lentils are the lentils to start with it's a gateway lentil lentils for beginners my first lentil yeah so let's get started so right now i have two tablespoons of melted butter unsalted it's over medium heat we're just gonna start by sweating one large onion that has been chopped fine so i noticed you said sweat not saute and i'm guessing you said that on purpose i did julia we don't want any color in our onions we just want to soften them so we're going to add a teaspoon of table salt the salt is going to extract the moisture from the onions and it's going to help the onions to soften more quickly and it's also going to hinder browning we're just gonna let this cook for about five minutes julie until the onions have softened and they start to become translucent okay so those have cooked for about five minutes now we're ready to add our spices so we were inspired by the north african spice blend and as you can see in front of me we have a bunch of different spices and there is a method to the madness so we have a grouping of spicy ingredients warm ingredients citrusy and earthy ingredients oh so sort of the combination of flavors when they melt together they make that exact flavor it's beautiful yes so we're going to start by adding a quarter teaspoon of black pepper a little heat yes quarter teaspoon of ground ginger a little more heat pinch of cayenne clearly more heat now we're adding an eighth of a teaspoon of ground cinnamon which is very nice and warm and we're going to add three quarters of a teaspoon of coriander earthy citrusy yeah exactly and also half a teaspoon of cumin really beautiful if we cook this for another two minutes we're just going to let those spices bloom and that's going to really extract the volatile oils and intensify the flavor now two minutes seems like a long time to bloom spices well there's a lot of spices here and we're actually cooking over medium heat it's going to go kind of slowly we just want to draw out those flavors so next we're going to add one tablespoon of tomato paste and we're going to add one clove of minced garlic we're going to cook this mixture for one minute what we really want to do here is we want to cook out that tomato paste so it's going to go from red to brown intensifying the tomato flavor and just developing an extra richness that's going to give our soup more complexity and i notice you're stirring it a lot you're making sure that the fond that's starting to build on the bottom of the pan doesn't burn exactly yep i'm scraping it up and i want all that tomato paste to really feel that heat and cook out all right so now we're moving on to our liquid ingredients we are using four cups of chicken broth and two cups of water now a lot of recipes call for straight chicken broth but we found that it just added too much chicken flavor and it just dominated the other flavors so this recipe is easy you're just adding stuff to the pot there's no in or out it's just i like this right now we're going to add one and a half cups of red lentils during our testing a lot of recipes call for less lentils per liquid and it was just too thin so we wanted more body so we actually increased the amount of lentils so that it was the perfect consistency at the end now we're just going to bring this up to a boil and we're going to cut it down to a simmer they're going to cook very quickly even about 15 minutes and we actually want them to break down and thicken the soup for us hey julia that smells good isn't it and look it's thickened nicely all on its own all on its own those lentils really broke down and did their job as you can see the lentils kind of sunk to the bottom and the liquids at the top but we really wanted like a homogeneous texture from the top to the bottom so we tried a few different things tried putting it in the blender and the food processor which of course worked but for such a simple soup we didn't want to dirty any unnecessary appliances we also tried boiling it vigorously and that worked but we scorched the bottom of the pot and then we just tried stirring it with a wooden spoon and that worked but it took a while so we decided to swap the wooden spoon out with a whisk you're just going to whisk it i'm just going to whisk it for 30 seconds oh you can see that just thickened it right up and that's it and smoothed it out how easy was that now we're gonna season our soup north africans i use a lot of lemon juice we're gonna add two tablespoons of lemon juice and the lemon juice is really gonna take all the spices and just make them pop i'm gonna stir that in anything you ever cook you should always taste before you serve it i'm just going to add a pinch that's all it needs all right so i'm going to put a lid one more thing we thought that our soup needed a little bit of richness so we're going to make a really simple garlic going on here melted butter melted butter it makes everything better doesn't it so there's two tablespoons of melted butter we're gonna add one and a half teaspoons of dried mint really fried mint is like very unusual for us to actually call for in any of our recipes but it's very typical to the region it really lifts the soup and we're gonna add one teaspoon of paprika wow what an interesting combination yeah it's great you just wait you just wait that kind of looks like you could drizzle it on anything and i'd eat it and that's it that's our garnish that was as simple as convey i know that was simpler than the soup it was it's that time oh what a beautiful color too beautiful and it just makes this dish look so beautiful even more beautiful than just the soup itself and we're going to garnish this with a little bit of fresh cilantro just like for that fresh herbal note wow so elegant looking oh that's isn't it amazing well the consistency it's smooth but there are just little bits of lentils in there and i like that combination of textures get that little little heat at the end i liked it well it really is the spices that really elevate that red lentil to a really elegant soup nicely done erin thank you terrific thank you for a fast and easy lentil soup use red lentils build serious flavor in the pot with an onion a few spices minced garlic and tomato paste simmer the red lentils in a combination of broth and water for just 15 minutes and finish with lemon juice and a little butter and there you have it a terrific recipe for red lentil soup with north african spices this is amazing thanks for watching america's test kitchen what'd you think well leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later i'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 328,406

Keywords: red lentil soup, lentil soup, soup recipes, red lentils, lentils, soups, soup, how to make soup, america's test kitchen, americas test kitchen, north african spices, north african lentil soup, healthy soup, healthy recipes, recipes, cooking show, cooking tv show

Id: uH8Fq7CwfR8

Length: 6min 44sec (404 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 14 2019