A heart-warming Roasted Root Vegetable Lentil Soup to fight all winter depression. Loaded with healthy vegetables and protein-rich lentils. A cheap and easy dinner recipe to please the whole family.
This soup is wonderful for rainy, windy, snowy chilly fall or winter days because it’s a mineral and vitamin bomb that warms your heart and keeps you healthy.
The potatoes, carrots, onion, beets and garlic in this recipe are called root chakra foods and eating them is supposed to have a warming effect on our bodies and both prepare us for winter and ground our energy. However, you don’t have to believe in the holistic power of root vegetables, you can simply eat them for their extraordinary nutrient-density. Root vegetables, like their name already says, grow underground and thus are able to absorb a great amount of nutrients from the soil. For more information about root vegetables I highly recommend reading Oh My Veggies‘ Guide to Root Vegetables.
Best root vegetables for soup
In my opinion, the best root vegetables for soup are potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, celery, all kinds of squashes and maybe (?) beets. I’m not a fan of beets. It’s more. I hate beets :S so I can’t really recommend them of course but if you like beets, they might be a good option, too. The important part is to choose vegetables that keep their form after roasting and that release all their sweetness when roasting.
Root Vegetable Soup with Lentils
By adding lentils to your root vegetable soup you add a lot of protein and make it a complete vegan meal. No need to prepare a main dish after this. The soup alone fuels your body and mind. Besides, I literally think there is no better source of protein for a soup. Lentils are absolutely delicious. Especially in combination with sweet and earthy root vegetables.
If you love lentils in soup as much as I do, you may also want to check out this Red Lentil Sweet Potato Soup.
Roasted Root Vegetable Lentil Soup
Ingredients
- 5 medium sized red potatoes
- 1 large sweet potato
- 3 large carrots
- 2 stalks celery
- 1 small kabocha squash - (or any other squash the size of two average female fists)
- 1 small yellow onion
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp coriander
- Salt
- Pepper
- olive oil
- 1.5 l vegetable stock
- 1 bunch collard greens
- 1/2 bunch fresh coriander or parsley
- 2-3 cups cooked green lentils
- 1 Tbsp lime juice
- 1 tsp cayenne pepper
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 F.
- Wash, peel and cut root vegetables and squash into 1/2" squares.
- Peel and chop onion and garlic.
- Place root vegetables, squash, onion and garlic in an oven-proof dish and season with cumin, coriander, salt and pepper.
- Pour about 2-3 Tbsp of olive oil over the vegetables and mix well with your hands.
- Roast vegetables for 50-70 minutes until very soft.
- In the meantime, bring 1.5 l of water to the boil in a very large pot.
- Wash and destalk collard greens and herb and chop coarsely.
- Once water cooks add your vegetable stock and dissolve.
- Add green leaves and let simmer for remaining time of root vegetables in oven.
- Once root vegetables are very soft remove from oven and add into pot with stock and greens.
- Add cooked lentils and mix well. If not enough liquid, add vegetable stock.
- Cover and let simmer for 10 minutes.
- Remove from heat and add juice of one lime.
- Season to taste with salt, pepper and cayenne pepper.
- Enjoy!
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Laurie says
Can you clarify Step 9? Do you mean when the water boils? And I’m not sure what’s supposed to dissolve. Please help, cause this sounds fantastic.
Lorena says
Hi Laurie, I’m so sorry, that step is really confusing. I’m not a native speaker and my English cooking terminology has improved a lot over the years. This is a very old recipe. Back then I wasn’t too familiar with English cooking terminology. I didn’t use “stock” I used a vegetable bouillon cube which needs to be “dissolved”. You can use that or you can use real stock instead of water and cube.