indian carrot lentil soup

We have been receiving carrots have been pretty steadily the last few weeks. I'm not the biggest fan of cooked carrots... I mean, I'll eat them but they're not my favorite thing in the world. Regardless, for some reason, every time we opened the box and saw carrots, my first thought was soup. I knew I wanted to use this week's carrots, spring onions and tomato in a soup so I started looking around the internet for inspiration recipes. I saw this, but of course I wanted to put my own spin on it.

So I swapped out the mung beans for lentils and then Kenny & I made a trip to Rainbow to check out their bulk spice section. I wanted to keep the soup Indian-influenced so we picked out coriander seed & green cardamom, which would go along with the cinnamon and bay leaves we already had in our pantry. Also worth mentioning is that Rainbow has a garam masala pre-mixed spice blend in the bulk section, and a whole section of indian spice mixes and marinades at the end of one of the grocery aisles.

We decided to break out the slow cooker for this one but if you don't have a slow cooker, you could totally make this soup on the stove, just bring to a boil then reduce the heat to a simmer until the carrots are tender.


Ingredients:
1.5 lbs carrots, chopped
1 tomato, seeds removed and chopped
2 small spring onions, diced
2 cups lentils
2 Tbsp vegetarian chicken broth powder
4 cups water
16 pods of green cardamom
12 coriander seeds
3 bay leaves
1 Tbsp cinnamon powder
salt, pepper and red pepper flakes to taste

Toss the cardamom and coriander in a hot pan for a minute or so, so that the spices begin to release their oils. Add everything into your slow cooker and cook on high for 4 and a half hours, until the carrots are very tender. Fish out the green cardamom and bay leaves before serving.