Turkish yellow lentil soup (sarı mercimek çorbası) is the perfect fall soup to cozy up with if you need something quick and easy! This silky smooth lentil soup is perked up with a spicy buttery sauce and a good squeeze of lemon juice, alongside obligatory slices of fluffy white bread.
Turkish yellow lentil soup is delicious but also comforting, filling and it will definitely warm you up!
Different lentil soups
I used to order lentil soup all the time in Turkey and I didn’t understand why the color of the soup would be different from restaurant to restaurant. It took me a while to realize it wasn’t about which restaurant I was ordering from but about which kind of lentils they used to make the soup. The color adjective was always written on the menu before lentils, but my brain was only computing the word “mercimek” (which means lentil) 😅 . Oh well, it made for a nice surprise every time!
There are 3 main types of lentil soups in Turkey;
- kırmızı mercimek çorbası (red lentil soup, which is kind of the default lentil soup)
- ezogelin çorbası (ezogelin soup, similar to red lentil soup but bulked up with rice and bulgur)
- sarı mercimek çorbası (which is this yellow lentil soup I am sharing the recipe for today)
They all share similar flavors since they are made with lentils and similar vegetables, but they do taste slightly different. I often have a craving for one specific lentil soup over the others, and lately, it’s been Turkish yellow lentil soup that I can’t get enough of!
The simplest one
Sometimes, Turkish yellow lentil soup gets a bit of a bad rep and is called the poor man’s soup because it’s less substantial than other lentil soups. It’s made with fewer ingredients, but I think that’s to its credit! Fewer ingredients to prep means that the soup is really quick and easy to make. Some may say it makes for a plainer soup but I’ll say it allows the flavor of the lentils to really shine through!
Honestly, Turkish yellow lentil soup deserves a bit more love. It’s simple, it tastes amazing and it will get you warm. It does what every good soup is supposed to do!
Step by step
This is an overview with step-by-step photos. The ingredient list and full instructions are in the recipe card below.
Step 1: Make the soup
Melt the butter over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic. Cook for 10 min, stirring from time to time. Stir in the flour and then the lentils. Pour the liquid and bring to a boil over high heat. Cover the pan with a lid, lower the heat to medium-low and cook for 20 min. Blend the soup and taste it. Adjust seasoning accordingly.
Step 2: Make the sauce
Melt the butter in a small frying pan over medium-low heat. Add the chili powder, and cook for 30 seconds while stirring constantly. Remove from the heat
Different lentils
Other than the obvious color differences, yellow and red lentils taste and cook differently. Yellow lentils taste more neutral and cook more rapidly. Red lentils taste slightly sweeter and nuttier and require at least 10 additional minutes of cooking time.
Nevertheless, yellow and red lentils are more tender than green or brown lentils. They lose their shape while cooking as they completely soften and turn mushy, therefore making them perfect for soups and stews.
Both yellow and red lentils can be found whole or “split”. Split lentils, whose seed coat has been removed, have been split in two. Split lentils taste just as good as whole lentils, but they cook faster as they break down more quickly. To make this Turkish yellow lentil soup, you’ll need yellow split lentils.
⚠️I would not use a substitute for this recipe: I don’t think you would be able to find yellow lentils in most grocery stores/supermarkets. I only find them in Turkish stores. If you don’t live near one and if you don’t want to order online, I would suggest you make Turkish red lentil soup instead. Red lentils are way more widely available. If you can only find split red lentils (instead of whole red lentils that are round and not flat, sometimes called football lentils), cook the red lentil soup for 20 min instead of 35 min. Do taste them to make sure that they are completely soft and broken down after 20 min.
Turkish yellow lentil soup
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 35 minutes
- Total Time: 55 minutes
- Yield: 2 generous servings 1x
- Category: Main course
- Method: Stovetop
- Cuisine: Turkish
Description
Turkish yellow lentil soup is the perfect fall soup to cozy up with if you need something quick and easy! This silky smooth soup is drizzled with a spicy buttery sauce and a good squeeze of lemon juice.
Ingredients
For the soup:
- 250 g split yellow lentils (sarı mercimek) (1 ½ cups)
- 30 g butter (2 tbsp)
- 1 yellow onion
- 1 garlic clove
- 15 g all-purpose flour (1 ½ tbsp)
- 950 ml water (4 cups), or you can use vegetable/beef/chicken stock (in this case, use less salt)
- 2 tsp fine sea salt
To serve:
- 30 g butter (2 tbsp)
- 1 tsp kırmızı toz biber (Turkish red chili powder), or use any other chili powder
- 1 lemon, quartered
- soft white bread
Instructions
- Wash the lentils. Place the lentils in a sieve and rinse well under cold running water for 1 min, rubbing the lentils between your fingers. Set aside and leave to drain in the sieve while you get on with the rest.
- Make the soup. Peel and roughly chop the onion and garlic clove. Melt the butter in a deep frying pan or in a large cooking pot over medium heat. Add the chopped onion and garlic. Cook for 10 min, stirring from time to time with a wooden spoon. Add the flour and stir thoroughly. Add the drained lentils and mix well. Pour the water (or stock) and bring to a boil over high heat. Cover the pan with a lid, lower the heat to medium-low and cook for 20 min. The lentils should be totally soft and broken down by then.
- Blend. Remove the pan from the heat and blend the soup with an immersion blender. Taste the soup and adjust the seasoning accordingly. Return the pan to low heat while you make the sauce.
If you don’t have an immersion blender, you can use a food processor or a standard blender instead. However, fill the blender only halfway, remove the center cap from the lid and hold a kitchen towel over the hole while blending. Pour the soup into a bowl or another container, then blend the remaining soup the same way. Once it is all blended, pour the Turkish yellow lentil soup back into the pan or pot and continue the recipe as written above. - Make the sauce. Melt the butter in a small frying pan over medium-low heat. Add the chili powder, and cook for 30 seconds while stirring constantly, then remove from the heat. Chili powder can burn pretty quickly (it turns dark and bitter), so stay vigilant while you make the sauce if you don’t want to have to start over.
- Serve. Ladle the soup into bowls, drizzle the sauce over the soup and serve immediately with wedges of lemon and big slices of fluffy white bread.
Notes
This recipe makes 2 generous servings, but it can easily be doubled to accommodate more people.
A small bowl of lentil soup is often served as a starter in traditional kebab restaurants. If you plan to serve this soup as a first course and not the main course, you will get more than 2 servings with the base recipe.
The soup will thicken as it cools down. Gently heat it over medium-low heat and the consistency will turn back to normal. You can also stir in a little bit of just-boiled water to thin it down.
Turkish yellow soup will keep for up to 3 days stored in the fridge in an airtight container.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1
- Calories: 708
Do you want to warm up with another bowl of soup? Here are some of my favorite recipes:
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