Moroccan Lentil Soup

I’ve been trying to cut way back on the meat consumption in our house. My husband isn’t a fish eater, and I just watched “Seaspiracy“, so I’m off the salmon diet, too. There are only so many ways to eat tofu, and for everyone’s safety, we limit the amount of beans we consume in a week.

Enter the simple lentil.

In a fit of paranoia during the early pandemic days, I ordered about a million pounds of red lentils. There are lots of them left, as you can imagine!

So. I read a few recipes, tweaked a few things, and made this incredibly easy, delicious lentil soup. Healthy, super inexpensive, and the whole thing took about 30 minutes.

The secret of this dish is the spice. North African food often contains a wonderful combination of warming spices, like ginger and cinnamon, paired with more pungent ones, like paprika, hot pepper and cumin. This one was no exception. It was supposed to contain fresh or dried mint, too, but given that this is early spring in New England, my garden mint hasn’t appeared yet.

So I skipped it.

******THIS magic trick is a key to cooking. If you don’t have a spice….leave it out (unless it’s the key ingredient. Like, don’t leave the ginger out of your gingersnaps.)

*********Another trick? If you hate the taste of something, leave that out, too! In this case, most of the recipes I read included cilantro. I despise cilantro. I left that out, too.

But I love cumin, so I added more of that.

You get the idea.