German Lentil Soup - Authentic Recipe • Proven and Easy to Make (2024)

FAQs

Why is my lentil soup tasteless? ›

To avoid a bland lentil soup, use a flavorful broth—whether that's homemade or store-bought chicken or vegetable broth. The other key is building flavor. To do so, use aromatics like onions and garlic, include fresh or dried herbs, and season well with salt and pepper.

The other good news: Lentils don't need to soak as beans do (though you do need to sort and rinse them before cooking). Different types of lentils cook in different amounts of time. Red lentils are the fastest cooking and they dissolve as they cook and make for a smooth soup.

Lentil soup goes back to Genesis, with it possibly being the dish Jacob served Esau for his birthright and would have been eaten all over the Alexandrian empire, Middle East, and beyond.

Cook It Longer

Sometimes soup just needs to simmer longer to reach the perfect consistency. Check to see if the vegetables are tender, and then taste the broth. If the soup tastes a bit watery, give it more time.

Eating lentils can cause gas and bloating because they're high in fiber that your body is unable to break down. While fiber plays a large role in supporting and regulating your digestive system and bowel movements, it can also produce bacteria that leads to cramping and gas pains.

Add acidic ingredients.

Foods that have a great deal of acidity, like lemon juice, vinegar, white wine, and tomato puree, can help liven up the flavor of bland-tasting bone and other broths. "The acidity of these ingredients works to complement and enhance the broth's flavors, not mask it.

You're fine to eat unrinsed lentils. The only real reason to rinse it to remove possible dirt, and perhaps a tad of starch.

This time, it turned out mushy and there wasn't a whole lentil to be found. Damn it! I figured out later that it spent about 2.5 hours too long in the slow cooker (a little miscalculation on my part). If you're like me and have overcooked Lentil Soup then you're in luck because I'm going to show you how to revive it.

Soak and Rinse Legumes: Before cooking legumes, soak them in water for several hours or overnight. This helps soften the legumes and removes some of the complex sugars that can contribute to gas production. Rinse the soaked legumes thoroughly before cooking.

Those look to be radicles (embryonic stems, the part the root grows from) that have separated from the lentils. If you look closely at the less squished lentils in your soup, you'll probably see some with the radicles still attached.

What is the white foam on lentil soup? ›

That means the foam will typically appear when making meat-based broths and, to a lesser degree, soups made from high-protein vegetables such as chickpeas and lentils. When those coagulated proteins cluster together, they can create air pockets, which is what causes the “sudsy bubbles,” says Trout.

Eating more lentils may help people maintain a healthy weight or lose weight. Replacing energy-dense (or high calorie) foods with legumes such as lentils can help people prevent or manage obesity and lose weight. Research suggests that regularly eating lentils may help with the management and prevention of diabetes.

the color change you've observed is from oxidation. If you want to prevent this, lay some plastic wrap over the surface of your lentils to prevent air from getting to them, or add some acid, like lime juice, to the recipe.

As the veggies hit the boiling water, volatile acids are released into the water and are carried away in the steam. When the pot is covered, the steam and the acids it contains are forced back into the water. Once there, the acids react with the chlorophyll in the vegetables, turning them an unsightly shade of brown.

Soup can become acidic due to a variety of factors such as using acidic ingredients like tomatoes, vinegar, or lemon juice, overcooking certain vegetables, or adding too much of ingredients like wine or citrus. It can also be caused by fermentation or spoilage of soup over time.

Since lentils are starchy, earthy in flavor, and can be on the bland side, there are many ways to make them flavorful, including by adding them into soup. When other ingredients are introduced that complement lentils like onions, garlic, spices, and lemon, the taste is out of this world.

The beauty of lentils is that they are a completely blank slate — they can take on any flavor you throw at them. That also means if you don't give them any flavor, well, they will taste pretty bland. Add aromatics to the water or, even better, use chicken or vegetable stock instead of water.

The simple answer: you cooked them too long. Lentils are actually quite difficult to get right.

First things first, ditch boiling your lentils in plain water. Plain water is boring and makes for boring lentils. Instead, upgrade your cooking experience by boiling the lentils in your stock of choice. We suggest trying our vegetable stock recipe.