Lentil soup - Turkish Style

For our honeymoon, my husband and I went to Turkey! It was an amazing trip with an amazing about of good food. One of our favorite dishes was lentil soup.

I have never tasted lentil soup because in my mind it sounded like bean soup. Gross. But in Turkey the lentils are so delicate that they're not a large part of the soup but still add a ton of flavor. I have no idea how they make such good soup but I decided to give it a try.

For the first time pinterest failed me. There were not many lentil soups and to be honest, this isn't the most photogenic of dishes so I can see why.

I did a simple google search and found this recipe from food.com:

1 cup red lentil, washed and cleaned
4 cups vegetable stock
1/4 cup mild onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup white potato, peeled and diced
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon salt (to taste)
pepper (to taste)


Directions:
1 Place the red lentils in a colandar and rinse.
2 Sift through to remove and debris or damaged beans.
3 Place the washed and cleaned lentils into a medium pot with the stock, potatoes, onions and paprika.
4 Bring the pot to a boil and reduce to a simmer.
5 Loosely place a lid on the pot leaving slightly ajar as to allow some evaporation.
6 Cook for 40-40 minutes until the lentils are tender.
7 Add salt and pepper to taste.
8 Place all but 1 cup of the soup into a blender or food processor and blend briefly.
9 Return blended soup to the pot with the reserved cup of soup.
10 Heat through.
11 Makes four servings

Read more at: http://www.food.com/recipe/turkish-red-lentil-soup-140836?oc=linkback

All the reviews were positive so I tried it out. My only issue? No red lentils! I went to Target and Kroger and there were only green lentils. There is a difference between the two but I had no choice as I certainly wasn't going to go to ANOTHER store to find red lentils. Also, I used turkey stock vs veggie stock. Obviously in Turkey they would only use veggie stock but I used what I had.

Rinsed the beans and attempted to look for defects but I guess the organic lentils were checked through before hand.

Cut up some potato and onion

Added everything to the pot with the stock and water and cooked! 

I finally got to use my immersion blender! It was fun to muss up about half the lentils

To be honest, it started to look like a bean soup. So I added an extra cup of stock and two cups of water to have a soup consistency.

Lentil soup! I suggest serving it with lemon and a dab of greek yogurt! It was delicious!