Recipe: Beef and Lentil Soup

In addition to trying some new recipes lately...I've also brought back out some oldie-but-goodies that I just hadn't, for whatever reason, made in a while.

This is one of them: Beef and Lentil Soup

(I got this recipe years ago in an e-mail from Molly Green, but now I can't find it on her website)



Beef and Lentil Soup from Molly Green

2 tablespoons coconut oil (or any oil)
1 pound ground beef (I use ground venison that my manly man killed for us)
2 carrots, diced
1 onion, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
1 cup dry lentils, sorted and rinsed
1/3 cup quinoa, amaranth, rice, or a combination, rinsed, optional
4 cups tomato juice
2 cups beef stock
2 cloves garlic, pressed
1 teaspoon salt
black pepper to taste
dash Worcestershire sauce

In a soup pot, heat the coconut oil over medium heat and cook ground beef, carrots, onion and celery until beef is no longer pink. Add remaining ingredients and stir to combine. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and cover. Simmer for 90 minutes or until lentils and grains are tender, stirring occasionally.

Serve with bread or cornbread.

Notes from Molly:
- You can substitute ground turkey or stew beef for the ground beef.
- This recipe can be adapted to be gluten-free. I use gluten-free soy sauce instead of Worcestershire sauce, just in case.
- I've made it with rice and quinoa and both are good.

Don't let the number of ingredients scare you off from trying this. This is about my limit, though - when I start seeing that many ingredients in a recipe, I usually just skip right by it...

But this is worth it! And double it. Or triple it. Or quadruple it! Make as much as you can, given the biggest size pot you own. Then, eat and enjoy it for a meal...maybe leave out enough for lunch tomorrow...and then load up 4 or 5 freezer containers with suppers for the future. Then, when the day has been crazy or you're out at doctor appointments in the afternoon and it's all-of-a-sudden 5 or 5:30 and you think "You mean I've got to feed all these people?!??!" (Or am I the only one that that happens to?)

No problem.

Grab this "fast food" from your freezer, warm it up, cut up some apple and....Voila!

Supper is served.