Vegan red lentil soup with carrots, lentils, and a tomato base. This simple soup is a weeknight staple and can be made with common pantry items like canned tomatoes, frozen spinach, and dried red lentils. It takes about half an hour from start to finish and freezes well. Skip to the recipe →
I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on my last post with the sunflower seed energy bites, about sharing my favourite go-to recipes for every day. This is another recipe I make all the time, and it’s so great for 1. when I haven’t gotten groceries for three days, 2. when my budget is low, or 3. when I’m starving and need a quick and easy dinner that isn’t pasta. It can be finished in about half an hour, including prep time, which is just chopping carrots, onions, and garlic.
It’s an all around great simple recipe and makes good use of batch cooked ingredients and pantry staples like canned tomatoes and frozen spinach. It’s so budget friendly, especially at this time of year, as carrots are in season and so inexpensive and delicious.
I’ve been making this for years but hadn’t written down the recipe until recently and I got such wonderful feedback on my instagram, including a bunch of messages, that I decided it was time to share it here.
Like all of my go-to recipes, this vegan red lentil soup one can be easily adapted to suit your tastes. I like to include lots of spices – cumin, turmeric, ginger – but I’ve also made it with just a little cumin and standard salt and pepper.
You can switch out the carrots for sweet potato if you’d like. I use carrots because they’re much more available here in Germany and about 1/6th of the price of sweet potatoes, but in Canada I did it about half and half.
Other greens work well instead of spinach, and I’ve even added a couple of potatoes to the mix before. The brown rice can be replaced with quinoa, millet, or other grains, or simply left out and the soup served on its own.
Like most soups, it can be altered, as long as you stay within the general guidelines. That being said, I’m sharing this version of the recipe because it’s the best one, so alter it at your own risk (at least the first time around!).
This makes a big pot of soup, far too much for my little two person family, but it freezes fantastically and I love having a few jars in the freezer. It’s a total life saver for busy or tired (read: burned out) days and since I usually have brown rice or sourdough bread around, it’s a meal.
If we’re having it for dinner and I don’t have either of those, I usually make these vegan spelt biscuits. I don’t mind having the soup on its own but let’s be real, carbs make everything better.
Some more great soup recipes:
Kale, White Bean, and Lemon Soup
West African Peanut Soup
Roasted Tomato, Zucchini, and Eggplant Soup
Creamy Cauliflower Potato Soup
Chickpea Noodle Soup
Spring Green Minestrone
Or, check out this collection of cozy cold weather soup recipes!
Let’s connect! If you liked this recipe, make sure to leave a comment below, I love hearing from you! Tag me on instagram @occasionallyeggs and #occasionallyeggs so I can see what you’re making, and stay in touch via facebook, pinterest, and email.
Carrot, Red Lentil, & Spinach Soup
Vegan red lentil soup with carrots, lentils, and a tomato base. This simple soup is a weeknight staple and can be made with common pantry items like canned tomatoes, frozen spinach, and dried red lentils. It takes about half an hour from start to finish and freezes well.
Ingredients
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
- 1/2 red onion, chopped
- 5-6 medium carrots, about 3 cups chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 3 cm piece fresh ginger, minced
- 1/2 teaspoon cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
- 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper, to taste
- 1 teaspoon sea salt, to taste
- 400 grams (1 can) diced tomatoes
- 1.5 litres / 6 cups vegetable stock
- 1 cup red lentils, soaked*
- 150 grams / 1 cup frozen spinach*
- Juice of 1/2 a lemon
- Brown rice, to serve
Instructions
- In a large pot, heat the oil over medium. Add the onion and sauté for a couple of minutes or until soft and fragrant. Stir in the carrots, and cook for another minute or two. Add the garlic, ginger, and spices, stirring to coat the vegetables, to wake up the spices. Now add the salt and tomatoes, stir, and pour the vegetable stock in.
- Increase the heat to high and bring the soup to a rolling boil. Add the lentils and reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 20-25 minutes, or until the carrots are tender. Stir in the spinach and turn off the heat, letting the hot soup thaw the spinach. Add the lemon juice, taste, and season if necessary.
- Serve over brown rice and store leftovers in the refrigerator or freezer.
Notes
* Try to soak the lentils for 24 hours if you can. I like to soak red lentils as part of my batch cooking on the weekend and then freeze jars of them for this soup or red lentil patties. If you can't soak them or you forgot, just give them a rinse before adding them to the soup.
** If you want to use fresh spinach, go for about 100g and remove any larger stems.
• Using the heat from the soup to thaw the spinach has two purposes - it brings the soup down to an edible temperature, and it keeps the nutrients of the spinach largely intact. And the colour stays nice and green!
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
6Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving:Calories: 360 Total Fat: 0.5g Sodium: 412mg Carbohydrates: 18g Fiber: 24g Sugar: 3g Protein: 16g
Ah! Perfect autumn hearty soup option, I am going to add this as a variety to my go-to autumn list. thank you for sharing. Love the photography 🙂
This is such a gorgeous bowl of goodness. You can tell how wholesome this is just by *looking* at it! It can be tough to photograph broth-y soups beautifully, I find. But these photos are stunning. I'll definitely be making this over the cooler months 🙂
Yes! I make similar soups too in the winter. They're so simple to make, fast too for those busy weeknights, and packed with nutritious yumminess. Yours looks absolutely wonderful, it *almost* makes me excited about freezing temperatures. haha And I agree, I do like a big slice of crusty bread in my soup! 🙂
I love making soups and your nutrient rich recipe has me inspired on this brisk morning to pull out my soup pot. Your tip regarding adding the frozen spinach at the end is brilliant. I cannot wait to try your soup – thank you for sharing.
Wow those pics are stunning and this soup looks so great for the cold months – bookmarking!
Thanks, Karen, let me know if you make it!
Thank you so much, and I hope you love it 🙂
Hahaha almost, eh?! I'm never quite ready for cold weather either!
Thank you so much, Dana <3
Happy to hear it, Nidhi! It's a great soup to add to your rotation. Thank you 🙂
How many calories is a bowl of such a soup? Do you happen to know? Thanks.
I don't calculate calories, sorry! You could put it into a calculator if it's important for you to be really exact. It's a lower calorie soup, that's why I serve it over the brown rice.
I linked to this recipe from My Fitness Pal. It very precisely lists the nutrition information, with the calories as 254 per serving, but neglects to say what the serving size is! Maybe 1 1/2 cups? Anyway, this is delicious. I made it with about 1 lb. chopped fresh chard added to the last 5 minutes of cooking instead of spinach. I'm trying to use it up before the garden freezes!
made this. loved it. all the spices make it so hella tasty. sometimes soup can be bland, boring and really just a vehicle to eat as much bread as possible without becoming a lard-o. this soup stands on it's own. the boyfriend isn't a carrot fan so i swapped sweet pot. worked great. i went heavy handed on all the spices. could not be happier with this. THANK YOU
Hahaha totally! I always think if I need a loaf of bread to get through a soup, then the soup isn't worth eating! You're so welcome <3
Would I be able to use "split" red lentils or should I use "whole" green lentils instead?
I often make it with split red lentils, it works well!
Such a wonderful recipe! Thank you. I could easily eat half the pot in one day. I had some leftover pumpkin, threw that in too and it worked really well with thee rest of the ingredients.