Slow cooker vegetable lentil soup

 

Slow-cooker lentil soup with crispy tortillas
From “It’s All About Dinner: Easy, Everyday Family-Friendly Meals” by Nicky Corbishley, as published in the Star Tribune Sunday Supper column

Ingredients
1 onion, peeled and diced
1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
3 carrots, peeled and chopped into small pieces
2 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped into small pieces
½ cup red lentils
3 cups stock
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
2 cups of baby spinach leaves (packed)
¾ cup grated Cheddar
1 tablespoon olive oil
½ teaspoon garlic salt
½ teaspoon dried parsley or cilantro
1 large tortilla

Method
In a large crock pot, combine onion, bell pepper, carrots, potatoes, lentils, stock, salt and pepper. Cover and cook on low for 6 hours or on high for 4 hours. Stir in spinach and cheddar shortly before serving to wilt spinach and melt cheese.

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine olive oil, garlic salt and herbs. Brush over tortilla. Cut into long thin strips and place on baking sheet. Bake for 5 to 7 minutes until crisp. Let cool. Serve soup topped with tortilla crisps, if desired.

Rating: My first thought was “actually not bad.” That might not seem like high praise, but my expectations had kind of sunk while it cooked because there wasn’t really any spice or herbage going on outside of the homemade broth, and unlike some slow-cooking soups that drive you crazy with hunger because of the aroma all day, this one didn’t seem to smell like much of anything. But it was indeed a reasonably tasty soup that was nice to have at the end of a long day, and fairly fast to mix up. The lentils more or less dissolve into creamy texture so the main thing you notice is the potatoes.

Now, about that garnish treatment. Some people believe that all soups deserve a good garnish. My opinion is that a good soup does not require one, and in this case the called-for garnish was not only uncalled for, it was actively not what was called for if one wanted to garnish this particular soup. The tortilla texture seemed like piling starch on starch, so I would suggest a sprinkling of more cheese or a thin chiffonade of spinach leaves if you are one of those people who require lily gilding. (I'll note that the photo that appeared in the paper showed it clearly had been garnished with some grated Parmesan as well.)

That said, the remaining tortilla crisps worked fine as a topping on a chop salad, so they have their uses.

Whether this soup qualifies as kid friendly would depend entirely on your kid. I suspect as a kid I would have looked at it pretty skeptically, but perhaps children are more adventurous these days. The recipe says it serves 3 to 4. If you’re serving much of anything with it like a salad and some bread, 4 is realistic. It reheats fine.