Last week we showed you how to cook up a delicious vegan soup with ingredients you likely already have in your kitchen, and today we’re going to feature another easy, veggie-filled soup that can be made vegan as well by leaving out just one ingredient. This soup also uses a lot of basic ingredients, including lasagna noodles- and if you don’t have those on hand right now, we’ve heard that they’re the only type of pasta being left on the shelves. In times like these we need to rely on simple, healthy recipes that can use up some of our basics, so let us walk you through how we made this tasty and interesting soup.
You’ll need:
- Olive oil
- An onion
- Garlic
- Tomato paste
- Dried basil
- Dried oregano
- A 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes
- 1 1/2 quarts of vegetable broth
- Lentils
- Half a box of lasagna noodles
- A 10-ounce package of frozen spinach
- Parmesan cheese (leave this out of you want vegan soup)
To get started, chop up your onion and finely dice 3 garlic cloves. Warm a tablespoon of olive oil in a soup pot over medium heat and add in the onion, cooking for a few minutes until it just begins to soften. Stir in the garlic along with 2 tablespoons of tomato paste and a generous sprinkling of dried basil and oregano and cook everything for 2 minutes or so. Then pour in all of your crushed tomatoes and your broth, plus 1/3 cup of lentils. Let everything come to a boil and then simmer on medium-high heat for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, thaw your spinach in the microwave and break your lasagna noodles into fourths or fifths, then once the soup has been simmering add these to the pot.
Cook everything for another 10-15 minutes, until both the pasta and the lentils are al dente.
Then you can dish up the soup with some grated Parmesan on top (if you’re using it) and enjoy!
It’s a pretty quick recipe – there’s only a little bit of kitchen prep you need to do here, and you end up with a nice hot soup that’s got vegetables, grains, and pasta in it. The lasagna might seems like an unusual choice to throw into a bowl of soup, but the wide noodles really pick up the taste of the broth well, and it’s nice to bite into something so warm and thick along with all your veggies. And while of course we enjoy Parmesan on everything, the great mix of flavors here means you can easily skip the cheese if you want to go vegan and you won’t miss a thing. If you’re stuck in a quarantine cooking rut right now, try out this new soup to help get you through these long, uncertain days.