It's always time for lentils soup

One of the few dishes that I have been preparing regularly for several years since I moved out from my parents' place and that I can eat at any moment even several times in the same week is the lentils soup.

I don't remember any more what the origins of this recipe are, I just remember the many many times that I could share this amazing soup with my friends and family and loved ones, and everybody seemed to enjoy it as much as I did.

It does help that it's an incredibly easy recipe, it just takes a bit of time for cooking but the preparation is basically none. As for tools you'll just need a big pot possibly with an (heavy) lid, a big spoon/ladle, and a knife.



Ingredients:
* 200-300g of dry lentils (but check that you can cook them immediately and they don't need long rehydration in water if you don't want to do that, most of them will be fine);
* quite a bit of salt and pepper
* one or two bay leaves and/or other spices (I'm just ok with the bay leaves)
* whole chili peppers in the quantity you like (I like it quite subtle, so just one but strong)
* a whole onion or several whole shallots, just remove their skin
* one or more potatoes whole or cut in 8 pieces, peeled or unpeeled (I prefer the former)
* one or more whole carrots, butts removed and only peeled if they're somewhat old
* optional but recommended: several sausages, of any kind of meat you prefer
* optional if vegetarian: lemon juice

You can also add other veggies if you like: eg coarsely cut celery, or diced turnip. You can also use leaf veggies (spinach, kale, etc) but then I suggest to put them in the last five minutes rather than together with the rest as explained below.

Take the lentils and wash them a couple of times in cold water inside the pot, then put double their volume in water or more and let them rest a bit. The more you let them rest, the better they will be: they'll produce less air when digested. Very often I just skip this step or I keep them in water only a couple of hours. It's important you put enough water at this point because if you keep them a while they'll absorb a lot of it and you want them to finish it.

Change the water with new cold water. Here the quantity can vary but I suggest to put at least 2-3 times the quantity of lentils in volume. Depending on how much you use there will be more space for other ingredients and you'll have a more soupy or more dry result. I like it quite soupy. Just make sure there's enough free space in the pot for the water to boil also when you'll put the other ingredients in.

Cover with the lid and put on high fire and wait for the water to boil. When that happens add all other ingredients and make the water boil again. Then put on low fire and cover with the lid. Let cook for around 40 minutes or more, turning around a bit every now and then. Check with a fork the consistency of the lentils and of the hardest vegetables (eg potatoes) to see if it's ready.

This soup will come out of the pot at temperatures close to that of plasma. So put it in plates and let it cool down a bit -- or a lot! I love it when it's almost cold. If you didn't add any meat you can add a bit of fresh lemon juice, which is the way it is served often in the Middle-East. Also it's up to you if you want to serve the whole onion and some other veggies you may want to discard. Personally I just wolf down whatever is there.

This beauty keeps well in the fridge for a couple of days, just try to eat all the potatoes in the first day (or don't put them in in the first place) because they tend to go bad sooner than the rest. You can also freeze it for a while, that happened once to me and it was absolutely not bad at all.

As for cooking with the lid on: normally you wouldn't want to do that with soups because it makes them dark and "unclean". Also normally you'll want to avoid boiling them too long and control the simmering. I personally believe this soup doesn't need all this attention: the lentils and some other ingredients will make the soup dark and "unclean" any way. The simmering will probably make the the lentils come out in the end better cooked and wholesome but it will force you a lot of extra work to cook things apart and combine them later and to control the pot temperature all the time. Not worth my time.