Unlike most of the recipes on Occasionally Eggs with curry in the title, this one uses pre-mixed curry powder. (I once had a comment saying that it can’t be curry if it doesn’t use curry powder.) It’s a really easy way to make a wintery soup, with potatoes, carrots, lentils, and frozen spinach, a little more interesting. If you don’t have curry powder, don’t worry, there are individual spice substitutions offered below.

This recipe is an adaptation of a very typical vegetable eintopf, this easy lentil and potato stew. For more cosy winter meals like this, try a winter vegetable white bean stew or butternut squash and chickpea curry.

Ingredients

Ingredient Notes and Substitutions

• Potatoes: you can use waxy potatoes if that’s all you have, but a starchy potato will add a bit more body to the soup.
• Carrots: other root vegetables, like parsnips, can be substituted for carrots.
• Lentils: use brown, black, or green lentils for this recipe. Red lentils don’t keep their shape and will bread down too much while cooking.
• Curry powder: it varies so much, so use a type of curry powder that you like. It will, of course, change the flavour of the soup. If you don’t have curry powder, use: 2 teaspoons turmeric, 1 teaspoon coriander, ½ teaspoon cumin, ½ teaspoon dried mustard, and ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper.
• Spinach: use any frozen greens you like, or fresh hardy greens like chard or kale. Frozen peas are a good alternative.
• Broth: homemade vegetable broth is excellent, but store-bought is good too, or even water in a pinch (be sure to season properly).

Step by Step

Step 1: cook the onions for about ten minutes, then add the other vegetables and cook for another few minutes. Stir in the spices and cook for a minute.

Step 2: add the remaining ingredients, apart from the spinach, and simmer until the lentils are cooked. Stir in the frozen spinach and serve.

Recipe Notes

Stirring the spinach into the soup when it’s been taken off the heat helps to cool the soup to an edible temperature more quickly, and prevents the spinach from being overcooked. It just needs to be warmed through.

You can switch the carrot and potato amounts if you prefer a less potato-heavy soup, or add in some other root vegetables in place of both. Kohlrabi and celeriac are both very good here.

If the lentils are very old, they might take a long time to cook. If you know they’re on the older side of things give them a soak and rinse before adding to the soup.

How to Store

Storage: keep the soup in a sealed container in the refrigerator for up to three days.

Freezing: transfer fully cooled soup to airtight containers and freeze for up to three months. Thaw in the refrigerator overnight before reheating as usual. This soup freezes very well.

Expert Tips

• Cook the spices: store-bought curry powder is never going to be as flavourful as whole spices toasted fresh at home. Adding it to the vegetables to cook briefly brings out the flavour much more effectively – it can have a kind of raw taste if added to the broth instead.
• Season to taste: potatoes absorb a lot of salt, so you might need to add more than you think. It’ll depend on how salty the broth is, too, so taste and check for seasoning before serving.
• Keep the slice: you want to keep the onion texture and have a milder overall onion taste in the dish, and that’s why they’re sliced rather than diced. Be sure to cook long enough to get that sweet flavour.

More Cold Weather Soup Recipes

Cabbage Lentil Soup
Vegan French Onion Soup
Spicy Pinto Bean Soup
Carrot and Parsnip Soup