Pumpkin Soup with Red Lentils

I won’t write at length today, because this recipe wouldn’t have appeared so soon if it hadn’t been for one of the female fans of the PrymitywnaKuchnia.pl Facebook page, who… to put it bluntly, demanded the soup, or, more gently, sped up the process of making it 🙂

A fairly ordinary soup heralding autumn, though not entirely run-of-the-mill and, of course, with a little kick from sambal oelek. So, as I head off to bed, I wholeheartedly recommend it to you, as usual. Especially since handsome pumpkins have appeared in practically every shop.

At a glance:

Preparation time: about an hour, including cooking, so the hands-on preparation takes just a dozen or so minutes

Serves: a pot of soup, enough for about 6 people

How many calories: of course it has some, but they’re bottom-of-the-barrel calories

Ingredients for creamy pumpkin soup with red lentils:

• a quarter of a medium green pumpkin
• 1 medium parsley (root)
• 1 medium onion
• 1 medium carrot
• 1 fairly large potato
• a bunch of parsley
• a vegetable stock cube
• 4 tablespoons of red lentils
• 1 level teaspoon of sambal oelek (a chilli paste; you can substitute another chilli paste)
• freshly ground black pepper
• salt
• Lithuanian bread croutons (I made my own; you’ll find out how in the recipe, but of course you can use ready-made ones 🙂

How to make a warming creamy soup with croutons:

I started with the pumpkin. First, I removed the soft flesh with the seeds and peeled off the skin. That gave me roughly 1/4 of a medium saucepan of pumpkin. I cut it into small pieces.

In a medium saucepan, I brought about 1.5 litres of water to the boil, filling roughly 3/4 of the pan, and dissolved a vegetable stock cube in it. I added the pumpkin to the stock simmering over low “heat” — on my induction hob, 5 on a scale of 1–10.

I peeled the potato and parsley root, cut them into small pieces too, and added them to the pan. I did the same with the onion and carrot. I added a pinch of salt and a little freshly ground black pepper. I cooked it for about 20 minutes.

Then I added 4 tablespoons of red lentils and a bunch of washed parsley. I also added a level teaspoon of hot chilli paste. You can leave it out, but the soup may be bland. I stirred and cooked for another 20–25 minutes.

Once the soup was cooked, I set it aside to cool a little. Meanwhile, I got on with the croutons. I cut the crust off some hard Lithuanian bread with a strong caraway flavour and cut it into roughly 7 cm slices, which I then cut into cubes. I put them in an oven preheated to 125 degrees Celsius and dried them for about 30–40 minutes, depending on how moist the bread was.

By then, the croutons are ready and the soup is ready to be blended until creamy. I used a blender, of course, to get a velvety texture. The creamy pumpkin and red lentil soup is ready. All that’s left is to ladle it into bowls and scatter a few fragrant “Lithuanian” croutons over the top. Enjoy!