Lentils, Lemon, and a Sous Chef Named Mary Beth
Mike
6/2/20263 min read
This week’s soup came at the suggestion of my lovely and brilliant partner, Mary Beth. Therefore, I am officially referring to her as my sous chef for this production, as she picked the soup and did all the prep work for it. Beautiful fresh produce is a sight to behold in any kitchen, but even it pales to the beauty this sous chef brings to any kitchen!
The Red Lentil Porridge Soup is a delicious offering that gracefully straddles the line between a “hearty” soup and a “broth-based” soup. While there is vegetable broth in it aplenty – with more added this morning after much of it was absorbed overnight – the lentils, onions, and carrots provide a rib-sticking thickness to the composition that makes it just shy of requiring a fork.
A key step in the cooking process is, as the soup nears its completion, you divide it into halves and use an immersion blender (or regular blender if necessary) on one half before recombining the two.
The end result is a soup that ticks one of the Soup’r Club’s Tummy Temptation boxes of having a soup that offers a bit of chew.
Lentils can be overbearingly bland if not prepared correctly, and this soup effectively addresses that by blending exotic and domestic spices that emphasize the lentils' flavor without taking center stage. I do recommend being generous with salt during the finishing stages, however, to help the flavor fully bloom.
The lemon juice finish provides just the right amount of acidity to make the flavor that much more robust…plus, who doesn’t love a little lemon flavor?
Only caveat on this soup is it is light on spiciness, containing just a dash of chili (or cayenne) powder, so if you prefer more heat in your soup, as many of my fellow Soup’r Club members and I do, I invite you to grab your favorite bottle of Harman Farms hot sauce and dash away!
Zevk almak!
Jeff’s Update to Include Scores…
First off, thanks to Marketing Mike for making the long Dexter-to-Farmington Hills expedition and bringing the soup. Also, special thanks to Andy for still being “on break,” which left exactly enough soup for the remaining eight of us.
Now let the members speak…
Kevin: Normally gives soups a standard 0.5-point hot sauce bump. This time? 7.0 without hot sauce and somehow 8.5 with hot sauce. A full 1.5-point jump! Yet Kevin still insisted most of that credit belonged to the soup and not the sauce. Science continues to happen around us.
Conlan: No “solid” score this week. Instead, he described it as a “medium” 7.5, which honestly sounds like a soup size at Panera.
Josephine: Apparently despises lentils because of some traumatic childhood lentil event. Wanted more chunks, which is fair. Then casually tossed out a 9.3 anyway. Huge recovery from the lentil trauma.
Tam: Said a bunch of very nice things and then dropped a perfect 10.0 like it was no big deal.
Nathan: Honestly, we should’ve recorded this speech. There were stories about his mom, grandma, lentils growing up…people were getting emotional. You could hear a pin drop in the room. Then somehow the heartfelt monologue ended with something between a 7.5 and a 9.0. We’re still not entirely sure where he landed.
Adam: First few bites were apparently too hot…temperature hot, not spice hot. Initially thought 9.0. As the soup cooled, it evolved into a 10.0. So naturally he averaged the experience into a 9.75. That’s Soup Club math, people.
Jeff (me): My first concern was that Marketing Mike clearly did not bring enough soup. Immediate deduction. Then I started thinking it could’ve been chunkier and less blended. Another deduction. Then Mike mentioned he recently ran into Andy Y, and I briefly worried the Yavello blending philosophy had infected him too. Yet another deduction. But then…none of that mattered. This soup tasted soooo good. Healthy ingredients, great texture, killer flavor…I had absolutely no choice but to slap a 10.0 on this masterpiece.
Final Score: 9.15 average. Another Soup Club banger.
Next week belongs to Adam. And for anyone reading this…he literally just found out today and is already souper excited. Quick note to Adam for next week: some of us enjoy second bowls. Some of us enjoy third bowls. Plan accordingly, rookie.
Godspeed, buddy.
