Creamy Lentil Soup

Puréeing the soup and adding milk gives this version of lentil soup a smooth, creamy texture. It makes a great gluten-free meal.

Serve your gluten-free lentil soup with a green salad, and you have a complete meal!

You can find a number of lentil soup recipes published by the many excellent food writers on Substack, but I think mine is a different from most you’ll see, because it is puréed and includes milk, so it has a creamy texture rather than chunky. Based on a French recipe, this is how I’ve always made lentil soup, and I make at least one batch every winter.

Following up on last week’s recipe for leek and potato soup, this is my second soup incorporating leeks. So if you’ve ever found yourself eyeing a beautiful bunch of leeks but weren’t sure what to do with them, you no longer have to wonder, because I’ve now given you two simple soup recipes to use them in. (For directions on how to prepare fresh leeks for cooking, see my recipe for leek and potato soup.)

We’re going to use dried lentils for this recipe. When using dried legumes, I soak them in water with a bit of baking soda for several hours before cooking them (larger beans may take overnight, but lentils need only a couple of hours). The baking soda helps tenderize the beans so they cook faster. An alkaline substance, baking soda also seems to break down the components that cause the bloating and flatulence we associate with eating beans. But don’t overdo it—for the 3 cups of lentils in this recipe, half a teaspoon of baking soda is enough. You may need to add more water as the expanding lentils absorb the water.

Soaking also helps bring out any random bits and pieces that don’t belong in your lentils, so be sure to rinse them very well in a strainer—I’ve found twigs and pebbles, and I recently heard that because lentils can be grown close to wheat fields, they may contain bits of wheat, which we, as gluten-free cooks, definitely don’t want.

I also often cook beans or lentils with smoked pork products, as in my Cuban black beans (unless I’m cooking an Indian recipe—see my black eyed peas curry). So this recipe includes bacon, but if you want to make this recipe vegetarian, simply leave out the bacon and use a tablespoon of oil to sauté the vegetables.

One simplification I’ve made for this recipe is that, unlike the traditional method of flavoring the soup with a bouquet garni, which is a bundle of herbs and spices wrapped in cheesecloth and tied with kitchen string, I just throw each ingredient in individually. Since this is puréed, it doesn’t matter that the thyme and parsley stay in the soup, and it is pretty easy to fish out the bay leaves and orange peel when the time comes. But if you want to make a bouquet garni, you can use several fresh sprigs of thyme rather than the dried thyme and use whole sprigs of parsley instead of chopping it.

Using an immersion blender to puree the soup will make this recipe even easier. Unfortunately, my immersion blender wasn’t with me when I made this recipe in DC, so I had to purée the soup in batches using my regular blender, transferring each batch from the blender to a bowl, then back to the soup pot when all of it was blended.

Remember that the milk is stirred into the soup only after it is puréed. Once you add the milk, heat the soup to serving temperature.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups dry lentils, soaked in water with ½ teaspoon baking soda for a couple of hours

• 4 ounces chopped smoked bacon

• 1 cup sliced leeks

• 1 cup peeled, sliced carrots

• 2 quarts chicken stock or a mix of stock and water

• A 2-inch slice of orange peel (try not to include too much of the white pith; I use a vegetable peeler/scraper to remove the peel)

• 1 tablespoon chopped parsley leaves

• 1 teaspoon dried thyme

• 2 bay leaves

To add after cooking:

• 1 cup milk

In addition to chicken stock, you’ll need (clockwise from upper left): chopped bacon, soaked and rinsed lentils, peeled and sliced carrots, seasonings (parsley, orange peel, bay leaves, thyme), and sliced leeks.

Directions:

• In a large pot, sauté the bacon on medium heat until the fat is rendered (you can use a bit of butter or oil to get it started)

• Add the leeks and carrots and sauté until they begin to soften, but don’t brown them

• Add the lentils and stir

• Add the stock, orange peel, parsley, thyme, and bay leaves (do not add the milk yet)

• Heat the pot to a steady simmer and cook until the lentils are completely tender, probably about 30 minutes

• Use an immersion blender is easiest to purée the soup; if using a regular blender, puree the soup in batches, transferring each batch to a bowl until it is all puréed, then return the soup to the pot

• Add 1 cup of whole milk to the soup in the pot

• If the texture seems too thick, add enough water to bring the soup to your desired texture

• Heat the soup just until it begins to simmer and serve in bowls (if you want a garnish, chopped parsley leaves are good)

  

  After sautéing the bacon to render the fat, add the carrots and leeks and sauté until they’re slightly soft.

Stir in the lentils before adding the other ingredients.

Add the liquid and seasonings and cook until the lentils are tender.

Purée the soup, preferably with an immersion blender, then add milk and heat to serving temperature.

Here are links to my other gluten-free recipes using dried legumes: