Greetings, friends!

I can’t believe I’m writing this, but we have a new addition again! Hurray!

Let me introduce you to the new “chronicler” of the Sweet Chronicles (and not only sweet ones) Elizaveta Stepanenko. I ask you to love me very much and favor me very much!

Today she will tell us a little about herself, and at the same time she will share her recipe for a wonderful Lenten soup with lentils, and she will tell us many other interesting things. I promise you will be delighted with both Elizabeth herself and her stew.

This concludes my brief introduction. So, let's give the floor to Elizabeth. It will probably be more interesting for her.

Briefly about yourself

I love to cook, and even more I love to eat. From these two messages follows the third - a constant permanent state of losing weight.

The struggle with myself goes on with varying degrees of success, which does not prevent me from continuing to dearly love my cuisine and new recipes.

Actually, that’s all the introductory information about me. I forgot: I work a lot, I’m terribly lazy, I have two 17-year-old daughters and a husband. For all these reasons, I really love simple, quick recipes with a clear set of ingredients that you can buy across the street. Yes, I go to Auchan, but due to laziness I don’t do it often.

Today we are in Lent and the entire Internet is full of recipes for Lenten dishes. I decided for myself to try to do without meat: I don’t set deadlines, let everything go as usual, exactly the way I like it - calmly and without stress.

I decided to cook lean lentil soup. There are countless recipes with lentils, as well as varieties of lentils. In our store I easily found four types of lentils of all colors. My personal favorite is the bright orange Persian lentil. I didn’t compare the tastes, but the color is so beautiful that it simply must be tasty.

Hungry Esau, lentils and inheritance rights

In connection with Great Lent, I remembered the Old Testament biblical story about the sons of Isaac - Esau and Jacob. Esau came hungry from the field and said to Jacob: Give me something red to eat, this red one, for I am tired. It’s clear that red is, in this case, a lentil dish? The same food for a bowl of which Esau sold Jacob his birthright - the eldest son's right to own the land, to inherit, and to have his father's blessing. Thus, a simple bowl of lentils played its fatal role in history and became a symbol of neglect of family values ​​in favor of satisfying momentary hunger. By the way, I tried to find on the Internet the time when the Old Testament was written - approximately 1500 BC! I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely dizzy from these numbers, which are simply unrealistic to imagine. However, lentils have successfully lived through these centuries and are again on our table today.

Chowder or soup

Lentil soup. By the way, for the first time I thought about the differences between soup and this very stew. I found out that among my friends, that is, on the Internet, there is not much agreement. Someone says that the soup is no different - just a stew from the Russian word slurp, hlebovo. Soup was introduced into use by Peter the Great. And when did he manage to do everything?

Someone claims that the stew is cooked in water, unlike soup. Then the immediate question is: what about vegetarian soups? There is also an opinion that soup has many components, while chowder has the main ingredient, which gives the name to the chowder - potato, onion. In our case, it will be lentil.

So, lentil soup. Very tasty. Almost antique. Cooking time: 20 minutes.

Ingredients:

• Olive oil
• Onion - 1 pc.
• Garlic - 2-3 cloves
• Carrots - 1 pc.
• Celery (stem) - 1 pc.
• Lentils - 200−250 gr.
• Curry
• Paprika
• Sea salt
• Black pepper

Actually, the only mandatory ingredients here are lentils and onions. However, it seems to me that it is a bit boring and I added additional components.

Preparation:

1. Finely chop the onion and fry in olive oil. I do this in the same ceramic pan where the stew will be cooked (well, you already understand that I save dishes and time). I also throw in some chopped garlic. Fry until the garlic has a distinct aroma and the onion is golden-transparent.
2. Add celery and carrots. Don't forget to stir so that nothing burns. I throw in a pinch of curry and splash a couple of spoons of water. Simmer for 5 minutes. That's it. We can say that 90% of the work is done.
3. Add hot water and throw in the washed lentils.
   

   Lentil stew should be thick, so it is better to add water as the lentils cook. It cooks for about 15 minutes.

4. Whether generously or lightly salted, coarse sea salt will help us and be sure to add freshly ground black pepper directly to the plate.

Enjoy!

And for other vegetarian soups, go here: and here:

Elizaveta Stepanenko was with you.

Bye everyone.

Lentils are a product that our Soviet stomach is still getting used to and studying, but in vain. She is very popular in the East, in Europe and has long and for a long time fallen in love with the bulk of humanity. Red lentils cook very quickly and will always help out if you are short on time. Lentil soups should always be acidified, only in this case it fully reveals its taste. The soup turns out very tasty, cook it, you won’t regret it.

Ingredients:

Rinse the lentils until clean and cook. Do not add salt. Skim off the resulting foam, cover halfway and reduce heat. Make sure she doesn't run away.

Cut the carrots into strips and chop the onion into smaller pieces. I just don’t like boiled onions in soup, and small ones are not noticeable at all.

Chop the tomatoes and garlic as well. You can remove the skin from a tomato, but I didn’t peel it, I just cut it smaller. The tomato skin is not noticeable in the soup at all.

Fry onions and carrots in vegetable oil until golden brown.

Add tomatoes, paprika flakes, and garlic to the fry. Fry for another 3 minutes to release the garlic flavor.

The lentils are already cooked, so we add the frying mixture to the soup with the lentils and keep it on the fire for another 5 minutes. Now the soup can be salted to taste and acidified with olive brine. Add it to taste, tasting all the time until the taste suits you.

Serve the lentil soup sprinkled with mint and green onions, and place a few green olives and lemon in a bowl. If desired, you can sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Bon appetit!

This soup is very tasty with garlic croutons.

If you decide to strictly adhere to all the requirements of Lent, then an appetizing and nutritious Lenten lentil soup will be a real salvation for you. This stew turns out tasty and satisfying. It will perfectly warm you in the cold, when the path to Easter begins. The brew is not only excellent in taste, but also incredibly fragrant. In addition, in terms of nutritional value, it is in no way inferior to first courses cooked with the addition of smoked meats, meat or fish. So you definitely won’t go hungry during Lent! This is one of many recipes that will help you eat nutritiously and variedly!

Cooking time – 45 minutes.

Number of servings – 8.

Ingredients

To prepare an appetizing, incredibly fragrant and endlessly tasty Lenten soup you need:

• red lentils – 1 tbsp.;
• fresh cilantro - 1 bunch;
• onion - 1 head;
• chili powder – 1 pinch;
• carrots – 2 pcs.;
• ginger – 1 piece;
• garlic – 3 cloves;
• turmeric – 1 tsp;
• cherry tomatoes – 6-7 pcs.;
• curry – 1 tsp. with a “slide”;
• ground coriander – ½ tsp;
• salt - to taste.

How to make Lenten Lentil Soup

The technology for preparing lean lentil soup is simply simple. You can’t even imagine how tasty, nutritious, satisfying and healthy this version of the first one turns out to be, despite the fact that it contains no meat products or fish.

1. First, prepare all the ingredients. The full list is listed slightly above.

1. Tackle the carrots first. Wash and peel the vegetables. You can rinse them again in water. Cut the carrots into not very small pieces.

1. Peel the onions. Finely chop the vegetables.

1. Take care of the garlic. Remove the husks and films from the cloves. Press down a little with the blade of a knife. Chop the prepared garlic very, very finely, until crumbly.

1. Prepare the ginger. Peel the piece and chop it about as finely as the garlic cloves.

1. Rinse the cherry tomatoes and dry with a towel. They can be simply cut into 2 halves.

On a note! By the way, you don’t have to add tomatoes to the soup itself, but use it only when serving.

1. Next, prepare the main product. This step-by-step recipe with photos suggests using red lentils. It needs to be sent to a large sieve with small cells. Lentils need to be washed thoroughly.

1. Place red lentils in a saucepan. Pour in 3 cups of water. Set the heat to low. Boil.

1. Place chopped carrots and onions into the pan with the preparation for lean lentil soup.

1. Add ginger and garlic here.

1. Mix everything and continue cooking the first dish. Bring the mixture to a boil and from this point simmer for another 10 minutes.

1. Add turmeric and curry to the soup. Send ground coriander here. Don't forget the chili powder. They should dilute the composition of the stew at this stage. Add salt.

1. Stir everything well and cook for another 5 minutes.

This is how easy and quick it is to prepare an appetizing, healthy, warming lean lentil soup without meat, smoked meats or fish. This is a real salvation for Orthodox laity who decide to strictly observe Lent! This recipe will also be useful for vegetarians, because the stew contains nothing that their worldview does not allow them to eat.

Hello, dear reader. Today I will show you how to make lean lentil soup. The recipe, as always, with photos. Lately, I have begun to pay more and more attention to products that are loved by athletes and vegetarians. And all because I run, and I need to restore my strength after training. And from my own experience I have already noticed that it is harder to run after eating meat products. Like most men, I like to test everything on myself. So I came to the conclusion that before a long distance it is better to give up meat. Then it’s easier for the body and it’s more fun to run. And this lean lentil soup will perfectly restore your strength. I will show you the recipe, as usual, with a step-by-step description.

Lenten lentil soup recipe

To prepare the soup we will need:

• 1 cup lentils
• 6 medium potatoes
• 1 glass of tomato juice
• 1 small carrot
• 1 small onion
• 1 clove of garlic
• 30 grams of vegetable oil
• 2 bay leaves
• small bunch of dill
• salt, pepper to taste

We'll start cooking with potatoes, since they take the longest to cook.

To do this, we will peel, wash and cut the potatoes into cubes, or as you are used to. You can cut the potatoes the way you like. Then we’ll just look at the readiness of the potatoes and when to add the next ingredient.

I take a 3 liter pan, cut potatoes into it and fill it with water, about 2 liters. Place on the stove and move on to the next step.

Namely, we peel onions and carrots. I chop the onion finely and grate the carrots on a fine grater. Of course, it was right to cut the carrots, but I was too lazy. According to some chefs, when you grate carrots, they may develop a slightly bitter taste. But since I will also be adding pepper, I reduced my time by using a grater. (I didn’t grate all the carrots, they are large)

If you don’t have tomato juice, you can replace it with paste, only diluted with water. Our vegetables should boil a little, or even more precisely, I evaporate the tomato juice. During this time, the onions and carrots become ready and do not need to be cooked in the soup.

When we prepare the sauté, we don’t forget about the potatoes. When the potatoes boil, I remove the foam (noise). It took me another 10 minutes. Now I rinse the lentils under running water and add them to the pan. If you rinse the lentils earlier, then after standing for a while, they will stick together, and it will not be convenient to pour them into the pan. It can fall in a piece into the pan and “spray” you.

We used orange lentils, also called red lentils. It just cooks faster, and my kids liked it. Mix everything well and again switch to further preparation of the last ingredients.

Wash the dill and chop it. I removed the thick stems. They can be added to boiled meat. You can see how I boil meat in the article “.” Of course, not everyone will eat meat during fasting, but after fasting, such low-fat meat will be very good for the stomach.

Then peel and chop the garlic. I crushed the garlic with a knife on a cutting board and minced it. Or you can just crush it into a garlic clove. This is more convenient for anyone.

Our soup is not ready yet, and I begin to reduce the cooking time. To do this, I add two bay leaves to the sauté, add 4 pieces of allspice, and a mixture of peppers from the grinder. I do this specifically above the frying pan, because it is already standing to the side, not on the fire, and the steam will not get into the mill. The pepper should be dry, so it will be better preserved and then ground.

After we added the lentils, 10 minutes passed. Since the cooking time for red lentils is about 15 minutes, after 10 minutes, after we added the lentils, we add our sauté. Now you can add salt. I add about 1/3 of a spoonful of salt to a 3 liter saucepan.

After everything has boiled, I add the last ingredient, namely garlic and dill. Our soup should boil for a few minutes. That's it, the lentil soup is ready. I recommend not eating this soup right away. Let it sit for 30-40 minutes. It won’t have time to cool down, but it will brew and become even tastier, that’s just it.

If you don’t adhere to fasting, then I can tell you one little secret on how to make it even tastier. I don’t fast, and recently I boiled lard in a bag. The recipe can be found in the article “.” So, garlic can be replaced with brine, or with the water that remained in the bag after cooking the lard. You just don’t need to add everything; for example, I added one tablespoon to the pan. The taste becomes simply fabulous. And our lean lentil soup, the recipe for which I described, becomes very tasty, albeit with a few drops of fat. But you don’t pay attention to this anymore.

Enjoy your meal!

Step 1: Prepare the lentils.

It is very easy to prepare a delicious lean lentil soup if you know a few secrets of processing these incredibly healthy legumes. First of all, turn on the stove to a high level, put a kettle on it with 1 liter pure distilled water and bring the liquid to a boil. We sort the lentils, remove the spoiled grains, pour them into a colander with a fine mesh and rinse them under running water to remove dust. Then transfer it to a deep saucepan and pour 1 liter boiling water Soak the pulses for 1 hour, and during this time we prepare all the other ingredients that are used in preparing the first hot Lenten dish.

Step 2: prepare the vegetables.

Peel onions, carrots and potatoes with a sharp knife, cutting them off in a thin layer. We rinse the vegetables under cold running water to remove any kind of contamination and dry them with paper kitchen towels to remove excess moisture. Then place the vegetables one by one on a cutting board and chop. Potatoes in cubes or cubes up to 2 centimeters, chop the onion into a cube of diameter up to 1 centimeter, and grate the carrots on a coarse grater. Place the potatoes in a deep bowl and fill with regular running water so that it completely covers the pieces of tuber vegetables, so that the vegetable does not darken before preparing the soup. Place the remaining chopped ingredients on separate plates. We also put all the necessary spices, salt, vegetable oil on the kitchen table and place peeled garlic cloves in a separate bowl.

Step 3: cook lentils and potatoes.

After 1 hour Place the pan with the soaked lentils on the stove, turned on to medium level. We put the chopped potatoes into the container, after draining the water from them. Cook the ingredients for 15 minutes, periodically removing the foam from the broth using a slotted spoon. The time is counted after the liquid boils.

Step 4: prepare the dressing.

While the main ingredients of the soup are cooking, prepare the dressing. Turn the stove on to medium level and place a frying pan on it with 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil. Add chopped onion to the heated fat and fry it, stirring with a kitchen spatula, until transparent and lightly golden brown, about 2 – 3 minutes. Then add carrots to the onions and fry the vegetables together 3 more minutes until the carrots take on a golden hue and soften. Then remove the pan from the stove and place it on a cutting board.

Step 5: Bring the soup to full readiness.

After 10 minutes the lentils will begin to boil, and the potatoes will be half cooked. More In 5 minutes the mass in the pan will resemble mashed potatoes with potato pieces. It is at this time that we add the dressing to the pan, all the spices specified in the recipe, salt to taste and squeeze the garlic cloves through a garlic press. Still cooking the soup 8 - 10 minutes until fully prepared. Then turn off the stove, grind all the ingredients of the dish using a hand blender until pureed, cover the pan with a lid and let the first hot dish brew 5 – 7 minutes. Then, helping yourself with a ladle, pour the soup into deep plates and serve for lunch.

Step 6: Serve the lean lentil soup puree.

Lenten lentil soup puree is served hot at the dinner table. If desired, this excellent first course can be supplemented with fresh chopped dill, parsley, spinach or green onions. Since this dish is lean, it can be seasoned with lean apple mayonnaise and savored with lean baked goods, which are prepared without yeast, eggs and butter fats. The taste of the soup is soft, tender and very aromatic. Prepare and enjoy! Bon appetit!

- – To make the soup richer, you can optionally add 1 tablespoon of wheat flour to the dressing.

- – Sometimes grated apple or sorrel is added to this type of soup.

- – The set of spices in this recipe can be supplemented with any other seasonings that are suitable for preparing dishes from legumes or for soups.

- – If you wish, you can not prepare the dressing, but cook all the vegetables together until fully cooked for 20 - 25 minutes. Then season the soup with spices, salt, vegetable oil, grind to a puree consistency and enjoy a delicious lean hot dish!