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
