Brown Lentil Chili Soup

I haven't made any of Jill McKeever's recipes lately, so decided to make her Brown Lentil Chili Soup.


The ingredients are listed on the YouTube page for the recipe, and I pretty much made it as-written. But not totally. Naturally, I reduced the chili powder way down to only a teaspoon (but it was still a bit too spicy for me), used one box of broth and 4 cups of water, because packaged broth is pretty hard to get right now and I don't want to use up all my stash yet. And of course, no cilantro! I used parsley instead.

Instead of serving it over potatoes I made some short grain brown rice. The texture of the rice I figured would make this a more filling meal.

Um, let me put it this way - I cooked it as Jill specified, including the 30 minutes on low simmer, then added another half hour on low because the lentils were still rock hard. At the end of the hour I let it sit another half hour on keep warm, but all that did was make it hot, not cooked more. I dished out my bowl of a cup of rice topped with about a cup and a half of soup, and for hubby, around 2 cups of rice and 3 of soup. This was so hot I burnt my finger when the soup touched it, so we let the bowls sit to cool for almost a half hour before we sat down to eat. I started eating at 5:20pm and was finally finished with my bowl at 6:15pm. My jaw is cramping up from all the chewing. The rice was chewy, the lentils were, as Jill's husband Charlie described them, crunchy. The brothy part of the soup tasted great, but I was not happy at all with the texture of the rest of it. During his first bowl my husband said it was fine, wonderful, fantastic, but after he served himself a second bowl much smaller than the first, he got about half-way through and said "Now I know what you mean about getting tired of chewing."





Next time I may just cook it under pressure for 8 minutes like all the other lentil soups.  I'm not a fan of crunchy lentils and much prefer them mushy. Will there actually be a next time? Eh, maybe not. I much prefer Heather McDougall's lentil soup recipe, but my husband liked this one well enough, so it's possible but not probable. Let's see after he eats all the leftovers on Friday for his dinner while I make something else for myself.