Moroccan Harira Soup - Amazing Pasta, Lentil, Chickpea Soup! - Food Wishes

[Music] hello this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with Herrera that's right I am very happy to be showing you my take on what I'm told is Morocco's most popular suit and once you taste this you will understand why since this incredible combination of pasta lentil and chickpeas is so hearty so flavorful and so satisfying it is without a doubt one of the best soups you will ever enjoy so with that let's go ahead and get started with an optional step and that would be Browning some cubed up lamb over medium high heat and a little bit of olive oil in case you're keeping score at home this is lamb shoulder that as you can see I cut up in nice small pieces and that's not only so they fit nicely on a spoon but also so it cooks and gets nice and tender and a relatively short amount of time so if we are going to use Meats whether that's lamb or beef or chicken or whatever we'll go ahead and cook that stirring in this olive oil until we've gotten some nice Browning and more importantly some of that fat is rendered out of the meats and I'm calling this step optional because this soup is often made without meat and it's still fabulous or at least that's what I've heard I wouldn't know I like mine with meat but either way once that's browned we can go ahead and toss in our diced onion along with the traditional giant pinch of salt and then stop me if you've heard this one before but we will cook those onions stirring for about four or five minutes or until they start to turn translucent and maybe take on a little bit of golden brown color and once those are just about to that point and they're looking a little something like this we can go ahead and toss in our spices which will include some smoked paprika some coriander some cumin some ground ginger although some recipes do call for fresh ginger instead in this I think I prefer the dry we will also do some freshly ground black pepper as well as a little touch of cinnamon and then we can also at this point toss in our minced garlic and what we'll do is cook this off stirring for about 30 seconds to a minute just to take the raw edge off that garlic and of course to toast and wake up those spices a little bit and once that's been accomplished roughly 45 seconds later we can add about a tablespoon of tomato paste and do the exact same thing all right we'll give that a quick stir fry for about a minute since it's a proven scientific fact that if you saute tomato paste a little bit it tastes better than if you don't and by now is hopefully you can see we've developed some beautiful caramelized goodness on the bottom of the pan and that is exactly what we want to see because what we'll do at this point is go ahead and transfer in some chicken broth or the broth of your choice and it's this liquid that will dissolve all that beautiful brown Awesomeness from the bottom of the pan and that really does add a tremendous amount of flavor to our soup but wait there's more besides our broth we'll also add some crushed tomato as well as some diced up Celery which I'm going to add kind of slowly so you can see that I added the leaves as well all right so if your bunch of celery came with leaves definitely chop those up also since I'm told by my Moroccan friends that that gives the soup an even better flavor so if you have some use them if you don't don't worry about it and what we'll do besides giving that a stir is raise our heat to high since we want to bring all this up to a boil and then depending on how thick we want our soup we can also add some water at this point okay I'm just going to add a couple cups since I do enjoy this fairly thick and stew-like but if you're into a thinner soup you could even double that or of course for an extra thick soup even use less all right that is just you cooking so feel free to adjust that which by the way you don't have to decide on now since we can always add more liquid towards the end and then once this does start to boil we can go ahead and add some drained chickpeas also known as garbanzo beans plus we will toss in our green lentils although I'm pretty sure any kind of lentil will work and then I also tossed in another nice big pinch of salt which is going to depend on how salty your chicken broth is and since mine wasn't very salty I knew I was going to need some more plus of course we will check and adjust that later before we serve and what we'll do after stirring all that together is reduce our heat to medium low and we will let this simmer stirring occasionally for 30 minutes and after about a half hour of simmering our soup is probably thickened up a little bit as those lentils start to swell up and get tender and hopefully things are looking a little something like this and the lentils were only one of three things we're going to use to thicken this soup and after about a half hour of simmering we are ready to introduce the next one so let's go ahead and take a quick peek at our second and third thickener and once our soup is almost done we're actually going to toss in these broken up vermicelli noodles which besides looking and tasting great are definitely going to thicken up the soup a little more but before that we're going to add what's called a flower slurry to our soup is simply some cold fresh water stirred into a tablespoon of flour and once we have that mixed up we will head to the stove and we will stir our soup with a spoon while we drizzle that in and besides thickening up things a touch more that slurry also adds a beautiful silkiness to the texture which I'm told is one of the keys to this recipe and since the lentils and pasta themselves will thicken the soup a lot of modern versions leave this out but I don't think you should okay I really don't think you're going to get the exact same mouth feel and then once our soup has been slurried and it's come back to a simmer we can go ahead and add exactly half of our freshly chopped herbs which for me is Italian parsley and cilantro and what we'll do is stir in half now and then we will finish up with the rest later okay so we're going to stir that in and then we'll let this simmer for another 20 minutes or so still on medium low heat or as long as it takes for our meat and lentils to become perfectly tender and if everything goes according to plan by now our soup should have thickened up nicely and we are ready to move into final production and all that means is we're going to stir in our vermicelli which depending on where you buy it might also be called angel hair pasta but anyway all we need to do is Stir that in and we will let this cook for another 10 or 15 minutes or until that pasta is tender and everything is looking and feeling exactly how we want so that's what I did stirring occasionally along the way and after about 10 or 12 minutes mine was looking pretty good but as you know we try not to guess in the kitchen so we'll want to grab a spoon and check things out and besides checking to make sure our pasta is tender we should also check our seasoning if this needs more salts which it almost always does we can toss them in oh and if you forgot the Cayenne you can add that now as well and then don't forget we still have half our freshly chopped herbs left which we will add right now and then last but not least we'll do the freshly squeezed juice from one lemon or if you think it needs it you could add more I mean you are after all the Vera Wang of your herrera's Tang but I definitely think you want to add some since that really brightens these flavors up it balances all those earthy sweet rich flavors and that's it once all that's been stirred in we can give it a final taste and if we're happy with it which I very much was we can go ahead grab a ladle and serve this up and right here you can get a great look at what I think is the perfect thickness but as I said earlier if you want your thinner just add more liquid but anyway we'll go ahead and serve that up and then as far as the garnish goes we could just do some more parsley or cilantro but since I had it I'm going to finish up with a couple beautiful celery leaves oh yeah those gorgeous chartreuse ones from the inside and then to finish up I like to do a little drizzle of olive oil and that's it my Moroccan Herrera soup was ready to enjoy and before I get to the texture and flavor can I just please brag a little bit about how stunning the appearance is of this soup I mean generally the surface of a soup is not overly exciting but come on look at this okay there is a lot going on there so I just absolutely adore how this looks and I'm happy to report The Taste and texture are just as impressive right we're talking rich and comforting without being too heavy and again that little bit of flour we use produces what's best described as a little bit of silkiness on the tongue or just a little extra level of smoothness we wouldn't have otherwise and of course these things are subjective but I think we have the perfect balance of spices here okay they're prominent without being overpowering and personally I love those little meaty bits of lamb but if there was ever a soup that I would be totally fine to in a meatless version of it would be this but whether you add some kind of meat or not there is a great reason this is Morocco's National suit and I really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 182,605

Keywords: Moroccan, Soup, Harira, lentil, pasta, chickpea, garbanzo, healthy, easy, fast, simple, recipe, chef, john, food, wishes

Id: fZVWBSbCAhQ

Length: 9min 21sec (561 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 20 2022