Phil’s lentil soup is a quick and easy lentil soup made with red lentils and seasoned with marjoram.
Community cookbooks are a treasure trove of great recipes. You can pretty much guarantee anyone who submits a recipe to be published with their name attached will choose carefully. As a result, these recipe collections contain everyone’s family favourites. They often contain an overrepresentation of sweets. I just flipped through one collection and counted 14 recipes for chocolate chip cookies! The dessert section is bigger than the salad, soup, vegetable and main dish sections combined.
While finding some outstanding baking recipes is a given, don’t discount the main dish recipes offered in this sort of cookbook, although depending on the vintage of the book you may have to sift through a lot of cream of mushroom soup-based recipes to find the gems.
It was just such a cookbook that brought Phil’s Lentil Soup to my Mom’s kitchen. The book was compiled sometime in the 1980’s by wives in a remote RCMP detachment in what is now Nunavut, and made its way to my sister Martha and her husband, Phil. When they were first married Phil made the soup for my mom and dad and the rest is history. It was hand written into Mom’s big recipe binder and named Phil’s Lentil Soup because good recipes shared by someone dear to you assume that kind of an identity.
How to add more vegetables to your soup
If you want to boost the vegetable content of this lentil soup, add zucchini or greens like spinach or Swiss chard. The zucchini can be added about five minutes after you add the carrots. Chopped greens can be stirred in at the end.
Meatless Monday: Phil’s Lentil Soup
Course: Lentils, Soups, VegetarianDifficulty: EasyServings
4
servingsPrep time
30
minutesCooking time
40
minutesTotal timeminutes
A quick and easy lentil soup made with red lentils and seasoned with marjoram. Thick and hearty.
Ingredients
3 Tsp olive oil
2 large onions, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
5 carrots, chopped
1 28 oz can of tomatoes
3 cups broth
1 cup red lentils
1 tsp marjoram or thyme
¼ cup minced fresh parsley
Directions
- In a good sized pot over medium heat, heat the oil until shimmering
- Add the onions, garlic and saute until soft
- Add the carrots, stir and cover. Stir often so nothing burns
- When the carrots have lost their crunch add the tomatoes, broth and lentils
- Give it a good stir (so the lentils don’t stick to the bottom) and let it come to a boil. Reduce the heat to simmer and let it cook until the lentils are soft (about 25 minutes)
- Add the herbs, salt and pepper
- Serve with grated Parmesan cheese and a squeeze of lemon
