Step 1

Rinse the lentils.
Wash the onion, garlic and carrot.
Cut the onion into small pieces.
Peel the carrot and slice it into 0.5 cm pieces.
Cut the garlic in half and crush it with the flat part of your knife.

Step 2

Preheat your cooking pot, medium heat, add 2 tbsp of olive oil.
Saute the onion and garlic for about 2 min till they are glazed.
Add the lentils, thyme, cumin, turmeric powder, salt, black pepper the chili and canned tomatoes and saute for another 2 min.

Step 3

Add 1,6l of water, add the carrots and bring it to boil.
Cook it under medium heat for about 20 min.
Remove 400 ml of your soup, blend it in your blender shortly till you get a creamy consistency and return it into the cooking pot. This adds a nice texture to your soup.
If you want to use your soup as a pre-preparation meal take off this part of the soup at this stage, let it cool down and put it into your freezer. Later when you like to warm it up again, bring it to boil just continue with step 4 in order to use fresh vegetables for your pre-prep meal.

Step 4

Add the spinach and let boil for another 3 min. Turn off the heat.
Squeeze the fresh lemon.
Add 1/2 of the lemon juice to the soup and stir it in with a spoon. Let it sit for 2 min. Add some more salt, black pepper, olive oil and lemon juice according to your taste.
Serve the soup.
Try out different variants e.g. by using kale instead of spinach. If you have home made vegetable stock available use it instead of water.
When you buy canned tomatoes check the list of ingredients. Best taste you get with those which contain pure tomatoes only and are not filled up with tomato juice.

Enjoy!

* Nutrition details:

Glycemic load (GL): Indicates how much glucose your meal contains and how this will affect the insulin reaction in your body. You can use a total consumption value of 100g GL per day as orientation. Meaning, if you have 3 meals per day, try to stay below the 33g GL per meal to avoid overconsumption of natural sugar. For example one average banana peeled (100g) comes with a GL of 16. One small portion of white rice (40g uncooked) has a GL of 22.

Protein / 100 kcal: In order to have a filling meal and to ensure to achieve the recommended minimum protein intake of 0.8g protein / kg body weight per day a ration of more than 3g protein / 100 kcal is a good orientation for this indicator for each meal.

Vitamins and minerals: Percentages represent the percentage of recommended daily intake (based on FDA’s Daily Value). Mentioned vitamins and minerals have a particular high nutritional density in this dish. Means, if you would only eat this dish for one day, you would easily exceed the 100% of recommended daily intake for the mentioned mineral or vitamin. Please take into account that these values are just for orientation and might vary depending on your individual situation e.g. if you are a professional athlete, pregnant etc.

Costs: Approx. costs of organic ingredients in Germany