By: EatingWell User
Tasty with some tweaking
Contrary to the other review posted here, I found this to be a light yet filling and flavorful soup with just some minor tweaking. I followed the recipe to the letter with the following two exceptions: adding half of a red bell pepper (chopped) in with the carrots and lentils just because I had it and wanted to use it somehow and NOT doing the snow pea and egg topping. That is the one thing I can agree with the other reviewer on: omit the toppings from the recipe entirely, they are a bad fit for this otherwise delicious soup. Other than that, the tweaks made were: added a smidge more tumeric than called for, probably added more salt than listed in the recipe (I salt to taste with soups these days), and I like my food spicier, so I added some (1 tsp.?) Spice Island Spicy Curry Powder (an inauthentic cop-out, I know) as well as some habanero hot sauce. Neither made this even remotely close to outrageously hot, but I do think it added some depth, especially with the Spicy Curry Powder. If one likes thicker, more-like-pea-soup soup, I would say maybe cook off a little more water or don't add the full 8 cups in at the beginning. While it was thinner than I might've been expecting, it was not a bad thing nor did it detract from the flavor.
Also, I don't know what kind of lentils the other reviewer was using, but if you are using red lentils, it definitely should not be brown... especially given the bright yellow tumeric. And yes, caramelizing onions rea