Roast Vegetable and Lentil Soup

There has been a lot of sickness in our family the last 2 weeks, and it hit me hard! I find soups incredibly healing for the body and soul, there is something really special about them. I have said before that I love soups and get very disheartened that my kids don’t share my sentiments. I had given up trying until I suddenly had an idea… what if it was really thick like a dip, had crispy croutons and a bacon on top. Maybe, just maybe I could win them over! So I started scheming. Soup is so much more appealing with croutons on top, and especially with bacon. Croutons were the easy bit to make failsafe, but to replace the bacon, my best option was to used fried deli chicken. If you hadn’t guessed, Real Meals Deli Chicken gets a huge work out at our place. For the soup, I love the beautiful flavours that are released from vegetables when they are roasted, and especially garlic, so mellow and sweet. So I was hoping that by roasting the vegetables they would be more appealing.

Well, the outcome… for the first time my 9 year old son finished a whole bowl of soup and requested seconds (he even had more for lunch the next day)! My 5 year old ate all the croutons and crispy deli chicken off the top and dipped the extra croutons into the sour cream on the soup, but didn’t actually touch the soup, but that is the closest she has ever been to soup. My 3 year old got excited over the shapes of the croutons and dipped some of them into the soup and ate it and polished of a heap of the croutons on their own. It may not seem like much, but to me that was a huge step in the right direction for all 3! And my hubby and I, well we loved the soup!

I made the soup suitable for the failsafe diet. But you can easily adapt it and change it to your own favourite vegetables. If you are doing it in the thermomix, I wouldn’t add more vegetables to the quantities I have as the TM bowl got very full and it’s not wise to over fill it. It can be easily made on the stove and then put through a blender at the end. I purposefully made the soup extra thick for dipping, if you prefer add extra water or stock to your desired consistency.

The Soup:
1 cup red lentils

3 medium sized potatoes
1 choko
1 swede
5 cloves garlic
1 leek
failsafe oil
2 celery stalks
Small handful of fresh parsley
600ml of vegetable or chicken stock

Pre-heat oven to 180° C
Place lentils into a mixing bowl and cover with water and soak for 1 hr.
Prepare vegetables by peeling and chopping into chunks. Leave skins on garlic so they don’t burn. Cover the bottom of a baking dish with a generous amount of oil. Add vegetables except the celery and toss to coat in the oil. Bake in the oven for 30 – 40 minutes until tender.

Vegetables ready for the oven

Place 2 celery stalks and parsley into TM bowl and chop on speed 6 for 2 seconds.
Drain lentils. Pour into TM bowl with the stock. Cook at 100° for 8 minutes.
Remove skins from garlic. Add the roasted vegetables and garlic to TM bowl and blend slowly turning the speed up to 8 for 1 minute.
Pour into Thermoserver.

 

Make the croutons:
Remove the crusts from sliced bread. Brush both sides with melted nuttelex. Cut into cubes or cut out shapes with cookie cutters. Spread out on a tray lined with baking paper and bake in oven at 180° C for 10 minutes or until lightly browned.

Soup for my daughters complete with shaped croutons

Make the bacon substitute:
Dice up some slices of Deli Chicken and fry in a little nuttelex until it starts to brown lightly and go crispy. I just used a few slices I had in the freezer.

 

Frying the Deli Chicken

Serve soup in bowls with a dollop of cream or sour cream and top with the croutons and deli chicken.

 

Tips: Store excess croutons in an airtight container. Great to use on salads too.

 

Comments

  1. I cooked this soup tonight without the chicken it was delicious. My older two children went back for seconds! I served it with a garlic parsley spring onion topped pizza. Thanks will be cooking this again.

    • Thanks Toni for the feed back, so glad it was well received! That garlic pizza sounds like a perfect accompaniment. 🙂

  2. Tried this today. Only had black lentils and they took half an hour to soften. The soup looked less than inviting but ALL 6 kids ate it. Even the 2 that normally refuse soup. Apparently I am not allowed to make it with red lentils next time according to DS 3yrs. Its a win! Thanks. I did the garlic pizza too. A gf one and a wheat one.

  3. Have you ever tried roasting celery as well? It gets soft and not so strong tasting, but quite good! I will try this recipe shortly!!

  4. Superb!!! – we only had the soup, no chicken or croutons or cream & everyone gobbled it up! Thanks again, Rona 🙂

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