Almost Turkish Recipes

Green Lentil Soup with Rice (Pirinçli Yeşil Mercimek Çorbası)





Fall is here and I'm as excited about the turning leaves as I am about making soups again. As most of the Turkish green lentil soups, Green Lentil Soup with Rice is also a Central/Eastern Anatolia specialty. It is very simple, yet really delicious one, particularly with a crusty bread.


























1 cup green lentils
1/4 cup rice
1 onion, finely chopped
6 cups of beef or vegetable stock
2 tbsp red pepper or tomato paste
2 tbsp olive oil
salt
black pepper
dill

-Boil 1 cup lentils with 3 cups of water until cooked but firm. Rinse.
-Saute onion in a pot with olive oil until soft.
-Add pepper or tomato paste and stir for another minute. (If you cannot find red pepper paste at Middle Eastern stores, you can spice up your soup by adding 1 tsp of spicy Thai roasted pepper or any Asian pepper paste to tomato paste)
-Add vegetable or beef stock, green lentils, rice, pepper, and salt, and cook on medium to low until rice is cooked.
-Sprinkle dill before you serve.

12 comments:

  1. If only you had posted this 20 minutes ago when I was looking for a recipe with lentils to make for dinner. Lovely soup.

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  2. Yummy soup... will give it a try next week!

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  3. I love lentil soup: thanks for the nice recipe.

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  4. Anonymous9:20 AM

    This looks very lovely, and hearty for winter dinners!

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  5. Anonymous6:42 AM

    i made this soup the other night with chicken stock and it was great, can you tell me why we need to rinse the lentils?

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  6. Hilly, we always rinse the water that we cook dry legumes because it get really dark and we don't want that in the real dish.

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  7. Now here's a soup I know I'd enjoy.

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  8. Anonymous4:19 PM

    This recipe was great. I used beef stock and the soup was delicious, thanks!

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  9. Hi we ususally add savory or thyme to the lentils soup and of course whole cloves of garlic :)

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  10. Thank you for the recipe. My mom would make it with rice noodles instead of rice and instead of dill she'd use dried mint. But I think I'll give this version a whirl. :)

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  11. Great, filling soup with a really wonderful flavor. I like the addition of rice. Simple recipe definitely worth a try.

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  12. Love this recipe. Simple, delicious and nutritious. I come back to it all the time. Thank you.

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