Greeting Gastronauts, this is Keef Cooks, I'm Keef and today I’m going to show you
how to make a wonderful warming winter soup: lentil and bacon
[MUSIC]
Now, I was planning to do pea and ham soup this week, but I've not been able to get hold
of a ham hock, so my apologies
to those people who are waiting for that recipe- I will get it done eventually, when I've got a ham hock
However, lentil soup, lentil and bacon soup, this is one of my favourites from when I was
a kid - made by Mr Heinz of course -
Really delicious, really warming and really simple, so, let's do it!
Right, ingredients for the lentil soup, I've got 1 medium onion, a stick of celery, and
a couple of carrots - you want the same quantity of celery and carrots
And 500 grams of lentils. These are yellow ones, you can use orange ones or green ones,
whatever you've got
And completely optional - two rashers of bacon - and, also completely optional, smoked paprika.
And you'll need a knob of butter. So, the first thing to do is peel and finely chop
the onion. And I'm just going to pop this
in a pan with the knob of butter on pretty low heat - we don't want - we just want them
to soften and get coated
We don't want any colouring going on. Now we need to top and tail the carrots, and peel
them. And now we'll chop them into little cubes.
And we'll pop these in the pan with the onion, stir those round and get them coated in the
butter - and then we need to chop the celery into little cubes the same size as the carrots
And if you know anything about classical French cuisine, you'll know that these are the components
of a mirepoix
Which is the fundamental base of lots of savoury stocks and soups, but normally a mirepoix
is cut more finely
However, I want a little bit of chunkiness in my soup
And the celery goes in the pan as well, stir that around and I'm just going to pop a lid
on this and let it gently steam for about 10 minutes
Now we'll add the lentils - before you do add them, you want to just rinse them in some
water just to get rid of any dust
and if you see any stones, pick them out. And now we want to add enough water to cover
the lentils quite generously
Now I'm going to throw a bay leaf in as well - forgot to mention that before - sorry!
Now we need to turn up the heat and bring this to the boil and I'm going to add the
bacon and about half a teaspoon of smoked paprika
-that's just because I fancy having a nice bit of smoky flavour. So when that comes to
the boil, we'll turn it down to a simmer
put a lid on, and let it bubble away for about half an hour and then see how we're doing
Right we've had our 30 minutes and so we'll just see what's happening - it's bubbling
and smells pretty good
I'm just going to have a taste [SLURP] Er, yeah, that needs seasoning but I'll sort that
out later. You can see the lentils
are still not really cooked - sometimes they would cook in half an hour - it depends on
how fresh they are - but this is going
to need maybe another half an hour - and basically what I want to happen is for the lentils to
disappear so you can't identify
an individual one - and at that point it will be done. I will add a bit more water because
otherwise it will end up too thick.
So, back in 30 minutes
OK, after the second batch of 30 minutes this looks a bit more like it, so we'll have a
taste - yep [LAUGHS] that needs salt
OK, so I'm going to give this maybe another 10 minutes and then it should be done
Right, here's the soup, lovely and gloopy and phwoar, smells fabulous - and tastes pretty good too
Now if you can stand it you can leave this for a few days and it will improve, but it's
really good now!
And that’s that! I hope you enjoyed it. Now please share it with all your friends
on social media
FACEBOOK: facebook.com/keefcooks, TWITTER: twitter.com/greatbritfood
PINTEREST: pinterest.com/keefieboy and the website: keefcooks.com