Recipe: curry-lentil-vegetable soup
In my country, Portugal, there is a long tradition of vegetable soup consumption. Many people still eat vegetable soups at least once per day. Therefore, I am used to eat soup almost every day since I was very little (basically, since I started eating 🙂 ). And I still love vegetable soups :).
I always thought soups are something healthy. Later, I found out that in some places they add something called “bouillon” (or artificial broth) to the soup, which is basically an artificial flavor. I was quite surprised as at our place my parents have always made soup in the traditional way: with plenty of vegetables, water, olive oil and a bit of salt. That was it: no artificial broth and no milk. I do recommend you that whenever you make soup, try not to use artificial flavors or milk (unless it is your homemade nut milk). I will explain you the problems with milk later in another post.
In this healthy vegan soup, besides nutrient-rich vegetables, I also added lentils to increase the protein content of the soup. It also contains super healthy spices and herbs, namely curry (whose homemade recipe you can find here), ginger and fresh parsley and cilantro. And now, that the winter in coming, there is nothing better than a nice and warm soup :).
I would like to add that I do believe we should be consuming part of our daily vegetable portions raw. This is because when we cook vegetables, many vitamins are destroyed. So this or any soup does not replace a raw salad! On the other hand, some nutrients in some vegetables are better absorbed by our body when they are cooked. Therefore, we can have the best of both worlds by consuming part of our vegetables cooked and a big part raw.
Preparation time: ~30-45min
Ingredients:
-1 medium onion, finely chopped
-6 garlic cloves
-3 medium/large carrots
-1 medium savoy cabbage
-1 medium head cauliflower
-200g kale
-20g fresh ginger
-1 tablespoon curry
-1 teaspoon sea salt
-250g lentils – here I used orange/yellow lentils, but you can use any type of lentils
-10g sea salt
-2L water
-20g fresh parsley
-20g fresh cilantro
-50g extra-virgin olive oil
-1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Preparation:
1.Chop all vegetables in little pieces.
2.Add all ingredients to a large pot except the olive oil and the fresh herbs (parsley and cilantro).
3.Cook for about 15-20min.
4.Turn off the stove, add the olive oil and the chopped fresh herbs and mix the soup using a wooden spoon.
Note: I add the olive oil only at the end, because I don’t want to heat it up. Olive oil is a super healthy oil, but high temperatures may destroy some of its good components and may also form other less healthy components. There are quite some contradictory studies on this topic, so while it is still unclear if it is good or not to cook with extra-virgin olive oil, I prefer to avoid it.
You can keep the soup in the fridge for about 2-3 days. If you think that you cannot eat it in this period of time, freeze it. You will then have a ready soup when you need / feel for it 🙂
Let me know how you liked this soup 🙂
Live healthy,
Ana