Friday, November 30, 2007

best soup ever

This really is the best soup ever. I've made it for two Shabbat dinners and my friends keep on asking me to give them the recipe and telling me how poor their imitations of it are.

Cook, share, be happy.


Lentil Barley Soup
3 Tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, 1/4 inch dice
2 cloves fresh garlic, coarsely chopped
2 carrots, cut into 1/4 inch dice
2 stalks celery, 1/4 inch dice
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried thyme
1 (28-oz) can diced tomatoes (we've also used peeled+chopped fresh)
1 (10-oz) box frozen chopped spinach (also used chopped fresh)
1/2 cup dried red lentils
1/2 cup dried green lentils (I just use one color because Pittsburgh doesn't like options)
1/4 cup dried pearl barley
8 cups chicken or vegetable stock, more for thinning (we once used a boxed chicken broth and another time the stock powder thing)
fine sea salt
freshly ground black pepper

- heat oil in large pot on medium heat. Add onion and garlic; cook 3-4 minutes, until shiny and translucent.
- Add carrots, celery, oregano, basil, thyme. Stir + cook 3 minutes.
- Add tomatoes and spinach; stir.
- Add red lentils, green lentils, and barley. Add stock.
- Cover pot and simmer over low heat 45 minutes. Thin with extra stock as needed.
(I like to let it sit overnight so that it really gets a great flavor)

בתיאבון!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Unknown said...

rebecca, this looks delicious. i love soup, but have had the hardest time making it, unless its just crazy cream-based and then blended. my trouble with vegetable/broth soups is making sure they don't just taste like water.

this looks amazing, im going to have to try it.

Rebecca said...

i- soup is super easy! so, some ways to make sure it isn't too watery:
- use vegetable broth (like from trader joes) or bullion cubes in the water you add
- use vegetables that have a high water content. i use a lot of tomatoes. truthfully, i don't add that much water. sometimes i don't have room for more than 3 cups after i've added all the vegetables (i tend to go a bit crazy adding vegetables). you can always add more water if you need to for later servings when you reheat it.
- let it sit for at least a day to soak up all those yummy flavors