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Every Sunday, I make a big batch of soup for the upcoming week. We usually have it for dinner the night I make it with a salad or bread, etc. During the following week, my husband likes to bring soup every day to work (and he is totally fine with eating the same thing every day 🙂 ). I have about 5 soups in my rotation. This week, I made an Indian Tomato-Lentil Soup. This is one of my favorites! The spices and fresh ginger really make it sing, so don’t omit them! I was planning to make a Caesar salad to go with it, but had to go with Plan B due to the romaine recall. I decided to add spinach to the soup to get our greens, and it was really good!
Recipe is adapted from the cookbook “Weight Watchers Versatile Vegetarian”.
Indian Tomato-Lentil Soup
Note: I quadruple the ingredients as written, which yields the amount shown in my photo. It will keep for a week in the fridge, or you can freeze for longer storage.
Ingredients:
1 inch piece fresh ginger, peeled
4 garlic cloves, minced
1.5 cups canned whole tomatoes (equivalent to a 15.5 oz. can) slightly drained
1 cup dried lentils
frozen chopped spinach, thawed and water squeezed out (I used about 1 cup); any other fresh or frozen greens would also work well
1 tsp. granulated onion
1 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. ground coriander
1/2 tsp. salt
Optional:
2 tsp. fresh lemon juice
1/4 c chopped cilantro
Directions:
Place the ginger, garlic and tomatoes in a blender and process until tomatoes and ginger are chopped.
Rinse lentils, and place in a stock pot with 4 cups of water. Bring to a boil over high heat.
When lentils start to boil, add tomato blender mixture, along with the onion, cumin, and coriander. Turn heat down to a simmer.
Simmer uncovered until lentils are tender, stirring occasionally, about 1 hour.
Add salt, optional lemon juice, and cilantro. Taste, and adjust for salt.
Enjoy!
Cost: The total cost of making this large batch of soup (a quadruple recipe) was about $4.50. It easily made 20 large servings. This equals $.22/serving!
How I achieve this price: I buy lentils in 1 lb. packs at the Grocery Outlet for $1, large cans of tomatoes at Smart Food Service for $.40/lb., and frozen spinach (also at Smart Food Service) in a 3 lb. pack for $1.06/lb.
Note: The soup will thicken up a bit after it cools. (I took the photo right after I had made it). The original recipe called for pureeing some of it, but I tried that once and preferred this texture better.
