Chicken lentil soup

Chicken, lentils, and things you probably already have on hand, can turn into a quick, hearty, healthy soup.

|
Blue Kitchen
Comforting chicken and lentil soup is simple yet has just the right amount of fortifying nourishment.

So, we’re moving. Not to another city or anything, and we've certainly moved plenty of times in our lives. But what has turned this into a huge monster of a time- and life-consuming project is that we're moving into a house that needed everything when we found it. Plumbing. Electric. HVAC. Walls built, moved or removed. And most important, perhaps, work to make sure the house will continue to stand as it has since probably the 1880s.

The roller coaster ride has not come to a complete stop yet and won't for a while. But it's finally being a little less, um, fraught.  We will be sharing more details in future posts. For now, let us just say life is being one long sleep deprivation experiment.

All that said, one can only eat so many takeout meals; we're still occasionally cooking. Chicago got a belated April Fools Day joke – not just snow, but snow blowing sideways. At the end of a particularly busy day, we wanted something hearty, comforting and quickish to cook. Bonus points if it was healthyish and used stuff currently in the fridge and pantry.

This chicken lentil soup pushed all the buttons. It's not a life-changing recipe, but it's one that fills you up and wraps its arms around you, telling you everything will be OK. And sometimes, that’s exactly what you need.

Chicken Lentil Soup
6 generous servings

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, sliced
3 carrots, sliced
2 ribs celery, including leaves, sliced
salt and freshly ground pepper
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 generous teaspoon dried herbes de Provence
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized chunks
4 cups chicken stock or store-bought reduced-sodium broth
4 cups water (plus more, if needed)
1 pound dried lentils
2 bay leaves

1. In a large stock pot or Dutch oven, heat oil over a medium flame. Add onion and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add carrots and celery, season with salt and pepper, and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add garlic and herbes de Provence and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about 45 seconds.

2. Add chicken. Now you want to stir it until everything is all mixed together. Then let it cook, stirring occasionally. You don’t want to brown the chicken, but you want all of the pinkness to turn to white – 5 to 8 minutes should do it. As a bonus, the chicken will pick up the flavors of the herbs and the aromatics.

3. Add the water, broth, lentils and bay leaves. Stir and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, until lentils are tender, about 30 minutes. (Wow, what a lot of commas.) Add water, if needed – I didn't need to. Adjust seasonings and serve.

Related post on Blue Kitchen: Curried lentils with poached eggs

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Chicken lentil soup
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Food/Stir-It-Up/2016/0420/Chicken-lentil-soup
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe