Hearty lentil soup

I am not one for reinventing the wheel, but I am terrible at following a recipe to a t. Why? Well generally I may be down an ingredient or two and why bail on what looks like an adaptable recipe.

I am on the quest currently to find all in one higher in protein soups and stews; so that we can feed ourselves on lean light super nutritious vegetable packed but also protein containing meals as we head into autumn and the off season.

I liked the look of this recipe so I adapted it to make it more soup like. It worked. I still refuse to call is vegan; to me it is a lentil soup/ stew just like many soups and stews are so why the need for divisive labels.

Here is the link to the recipe: Vegan Winter Lentil Stew

These are the subs that i made; I am sure there are many variations that you can work with should you have different vegetables in the kitchen>

Ingredients:

• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 yellow onion – I used 2
• 4 cloves garlic – I used 3
• 4 carrots (about 1/2 lb.)
• 4 stalks celery
• 2 lbs potatoes – I used a mish mash of purple potatoes, parsnips and butternut squash because that is what I had
• 1 cup brown lentils – I used Puy lentilsalso known as speckled green lentils as they have more bite and flavour in my personal opinion
• 1 tsp dried rosemary
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme – I didn’t have (unbelievably!) so I used oregano and mixed herbs
• 2 Tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1.5 Tbsp soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp brown sugar
• 6 cups vegetable broth – I didn’t measure the broth; I used a generous amount of chicken broth for no reason other than I find the flavour depth better. If I had home-made broth I would have used this. 
• 1 cup frozen peas – I didn’t have any and I did have sweetcorn on the cob so I chopped this in three and added it towards the end of cooking. I am not sure that G enjoyed the task of hard work getting the cooked corn off. But I did!
• I also added about 2 cups worth of chopped kale, and seasoning from salt and pepper.

The soup/ stew is delicious; I am sure that the peas added a nice twist because who doesn’t like peas!

Have a look around BudgetBytes other recipes; great little resource of a site

Enjoy,
Andrea