Best Lentil Soup
This healthy lentil soup recipe comes together quickly with pantry ingredients. Simple spices, fresh greens and a squeeze of lemon make it the best! Vegan.
Updated by Kathryne Taylor on October 3, 2024
This soup recipe was a long time coming! Over the years, I made some lackluster lentil soups that never saw the light of day on this website. No vegetarian food blog would be complete without a proper lentil soup, though, so I perfected one of my own.
Here it is. My lentil soup is made with mostly pantry ingredients but includes hearty greens and a squeeze of lemon for bright, fresh flavor. It’s seasoned with a few of my favorite spices and plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Honestly, it’s the best lentil soup I’ve ever had.
The original title of this recipe was “Spiced Vegan Lentil Soup,” which is accurate, but a mouthful. With over 500 five-star reviews, I think it’s safe to call this the Best Lentil Soup. Period.
Whether you’re looking to lighten up your meals or warm up with a steaming bowl of soup, this healthy lentil soup recipe is for you! It’s one of my all-time favorites and I hope it becomes a staple in your kitchen as well.
How to Make the Best Lentil Soup
Five reasons to love this recipe:
- The recipe calls for seasonal vegetables and affordable pantry ingredients, but tastes gourmet.
- This lentil soup has an amazing hearty texture that’s lightly creamy (yet there is no cream). The trick is to blend up a portion of the soup once the lentils are tender, and then pour it back into the pot. It’s like magic.
- This nutritious, well-balanced soup counts as a meal if you enjoy a generous portion. Lentils are rich in protein, fiber, iron and folate.
- Lentil soup packs well for lunch in a leak-proof container, and it tastes even better the next day.
- This soup freezes and defrosts well. Make soup now and enjoy it later!
Watch How to Make Lentil Soup
Please let me know how this lentil soup turns out for you in the comments. I’m always so eager to hear from you.
If you love this soup, check out my hearty vegetarian chili, favorite black bean soup and pinto posole. You can check out all my soup and stew recipes here.
Don’t miss my lentil minestrone recipe in my cookbook—if you’re a fan of this soup, you’re going to love it.
Best Lentil Soup
This simple vegan lentil soup recipe comes together quickly with mostly pantry ingredients. Be sure to have your ingredients prepped and ready before you start cooking! Recipe yields four large bowls of soup, or six more modest servings.
Ingredients
- ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1 medium yellow or white onion, chopped
- 2 carrots, peeled and chopped
- 4 garlic cloves, pressed or minced
- 2 teaspoons ground cumin
- 1 teaspoon curry powder
- ½ teaspoon dried thyme
- 1 large can (28 ounces) diced tomatoes, lightly drained
- 1 cup brown or green lentils, picked over and rinsed
- 4 cups vegetable broth
- 2 cups water
- 1 teaspoon salt, more to taste
- Pinch of red pepper flakes
- Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 1 cup chopped fresh collard greens or kale, tough ribs removed
- 1 to 2 tablespoons lemon juice (½ to 1 medium lemon), to taste
Instructions
- Warm the olive oil in a large Dutch oven or pot over medium heat. One-fourth cup olive oil may seem like a lot, but it adds a lovely richness and heartiness to this nutritious soup.
- Once the oil is shimmering, add the chopped onion and carrot and cook, stirring often, until the onion has softened and is turning translucent, about 5 minutes.
- Add the garlic, cumin, curry powder and thyme. Cook until fragrant while stirring constantly, about 30 seconds. Pour in the drained diced tomatoes and cook for a few more minutes, stirring often, in order to enhance their flavor.
- Pour in the lentils, broth and the water. Add 1 teaspoon salt and a pinch of red pepper flakes. Season generously with freshly ground black pepper. Raise heat and bring the mixture to a boil, then partially cover the pot and reduce the heat to maintain a gentle simmer. Cook for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the lentils are tender but still hold their shape.
- Transfer 2 cups of the soup to a blender. Securely fasten the lid, protect your hand from steam with a tea towel placed over the lid, and purée the soup until smooth. Pour the puréed soup back into the pot. (Or, use an immersion blender to blend a portion of the soup.)
- Add the chopped greens and cook for 5 more minutes, or until the greens have softened to your liking. Remove the pot from the heat and stir in 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. Taste and season with more salt, pepper and/or lemon juice until the flavors really sing. For spicier soup, add another pinch or two of red pepper flakes.
- Serve while hot. Leftovers will keep well for about 4 days in the refrigerator, or can be frozen for several months (just defrost before serving).
Notes
Soup recipe roughly based on America’s Test Kitchen’s lentil soup in The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook, with reference to The First Mess’ favourite lentil soup.
Recommended equipment: I love my Vitamix blender and Le Creuset 5.5-quart Dutch oven (affiliate links).
Nutrition
The information shown is an estimate provided by an online nutrition calculator. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice. See our full nutrition disclosure here.
I made this in instanpot with a few adjustments. Used 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes – omitted water. Cooked under pressure for 15 minutes – did not put in food processor – it was just the perfect consisistency for us. great recipe – we will enjoy making it again.
Thank you. I will cook in the Instant pot
Can this be made in a crockpot? I love this soup.
Hi! I believe others have tried it. I suggest looking at the comments. I prefer this as written.
This recipe is fantastic. I cooked it in an insta pot. I used 6 cups of veggie broth (entire container) instead of water and used 28oz of crushed tomatoes. Added cilantro from our garden with the lemon in the end. Also added potatoes. Definitely the best green lentil recipe I have tried so far.
Our boys loved it. They love lentils, rice with yogurt.
Best! Soooo good. My family and I loved it. Thank you for the recipe.
That’s great! Thank you for your review, Violeta.
Absolutely delicious! I made it exactly as is and just added some potatoes because I love potatoes in my soup. This was so wonderful, healthy and flavorful I will be making it again. Thank you for sharing!
Very simply one of the best soups I’ve ever made. (I did throw in a handful of frozen peas at the end, just before the kale.)
Made it last night and it was delicious – and easy to make! Perfect for winter. I felt good about eating it – I always could use more veggies in my diet and vegetarian protein from the lentils
OMG…so so GOOD Thank you
Wow–super yummy! I didn’t have any carrots or kale, so used leeks and escarole. SUPER warming!
Sooo delicious! I added a diced sweet potato
This recipe is so delicious! The only changes I make is adding celery and reintroducing the diced tomato liquid when I add the water into the pot. I also do not add salt. Usually there is enough in the vegetable broth to season it. I like a sprinkle of nutritional yeast in my bowl. It reminds me of when growing up, before vegan, I would sprinkle on parmesan cheese. This recipe is a comforting hug at the end of a long day, working in person, as a kindergarten teacher. Thank you for sharing. I am so happy I found Cookie&Kate for all the best soup recipes!
Please help me here, someone. I’m ready to make best lentil soup but the nutrition facts seem a little off. Am I just all wrong here or can the nutrition facts be for the whole recipe/not a serving? Carbs seem so high, my husband a diabetic couldn’t even have a serving of this. Using any canned ingredient does add sodium but a whopping 1324 gr per serving is like eating nearly a whole can of anchovies (1650 gr). A large can of tomatoes have about 150 gr sodium. I’ve always used soup as my go-to comfort, filler, low-calorie food, so haven’t thought of them as high-fat and high-carb meal. I too use lots of veges (cabbage to make it go further, celery for flavor) and sometimes seeds on top.
Hi Lannie, I’m sorry for my delay. More on my nutrition information. They are just estimates, but you can adjust by using ingredients low sodium, no salt added etc. That would help your sodium.
My grandma always made lentil soup with lemon juice. Lemon wedges were served at the table so you could squeeze fresh lemon in too if you wanted to.
This soup is awesome and the idea to puree some of it to make it silky smooth and thick is innovative and easy to do with s tick blender, which I am the lucky owner of. It was very yummy!
For me personally I found that I do not like the curry powder/cumin to distract from the flavor of the lentil-veggie concoction, lentils have such a profound natural flavor so I will leave those away next time. It is probably just because my grandma never used those spices, so it is a personal preference. The soup is very filling, satisfying and I’d think super healthy too :-)
Soooooo delicious!! I accidentally omitted the step where you blend a portion of the soup, but it didn’t matter because it was still yummy!
This is truly excellent— the name says it all :) It’s lovely with chicken stock if you are not vegetarian, I’ve enjoyed it both ways and love it equally. Thanks Kate, this is a winner!
This soup is delis! I added celery, red pepper slices, and i smashed half a can of cannellini beans along with a can of drained lentil beans
and chopped kale.
Live the soup and do did my teenage son! Thank you!
It really is the BEST lentil soup. I made it exactly as written and even my kids liked it. Very flavourful.
Very good! Both preteens and meat loving partner enjoyed it for dinner with homemade naan. I wouldn’t adjust anything except to personal taste. It will now be on our regular meal plan!
Perfect meal on the eve of a winter snowstorm. Wouldn’t change a thing about this recipe; it was delicious.
This IS the best Lentil Soup I have ever tasted. Yum I love it!! I used tomatoes that were canned from my organic garden. All the ingredients I used were organic. I pretty much followed the recipe to a tea except I was heavy with the spices. I didn’t have any greens but I had everything else and thank you this is so good. I always make a big pot of soup so I will be sharing
Thanks for the great recipe! This soup is so flavorful! It’s super simple to make with basic ingredients.. I follow the recipe except I use less salt for dietary reasons. I’ve made this several times now. Tonight I used homemade veggie stock and it was even better.
This soup made the whole house smell yummy and it was so flavorful and satisfying! This will be a new weekly favorite around here. I’m glad I doubled the batch. I had a feeling we would need leftovers. Thanks for the great recipe!
I found this recipe on a 1200 is plenty Reddit about a year ago. I had never tried lentils in my 30 years existing and was scared this would be bad haha. But because of the low cals and cheap ingredients I decided to try it. It is absolutely amazing. I have made it multiple times since (was a meat eater), but have starting to try more plant based meals in my diet.
I made it again recently with some friends, one vegetarian and one vegan. We didn’t have canned tomato’s so did a can of tomato paste (with half a can of water) and half a zucchini that needed to be used up for the missing texture. Everyone loved it.
This is a great recipe as is, and was also good with the minor adjustments. If you are a meat eater, or vegan or anything in between and are questioning this recipe – don’t. Seriously. Make it.
I know food can be very subjective (you’d think someone could figure out scratch ‘n sniff for the internet by now?) When I read the recipe, I thought it sounded good & it did not disappoint!! Well worth the effort & will definitely be in frequent rotation. I made a couple of minor adjustments, I only had canned whole tomatoes, but kitchen scissors took care of that, I doubled the carrots (because I love them) & I could have doubled the kale. This is a great meal, thanks so much!!
That’s quite a concept! I’m happy you enjoyed it, AB. Thank you for your review and comment.
Thank you for this delicious soup recipe! Love the flavor and it makes me feel healthy when I eat it
Hi Kate!
Absolutely in love with this soup! I am not keen on making soups ever, I can never get the flavours right, but this one was amazing and foolproof! As I couldnt find pepper flakes anywhere where I live, I substituted for cayenne pepper, and I think I added a bit too much, but everyone loved it! Will be making this again! Thank you!
AMAZING, wow, thank you so much for this recipe! I added cooked quinoa to my leftovers and it was yum as well.
You’er welcome, Valerie!
Love this recipe more than any others I’ve tried over the years. Highly recommend!
Thank you, Dave!
Over the past 50+ years, I’ve made a lot of lentil soups and you are right, this is the best! While giving it a few taste tests during the prep, I thought it would be too spicy, but the finished product was wonderful! It is a perfect winter soup. Thank you!
In my opinion, there is too much cumin in this soup. It’s was good, but next time I will only use half the amount of cumin.
Sorry to hear you didn’t love it as is, Lisa. I’m glad you plan to make it again and adjusting to your tastes.
Bow down to the soup queen! I’ve been meaning to write this review for an embarrassingly long time, seeing as I’ve made this soup a solid 6-7 times!! This soup has become a staple in our fridge for when one of us needs comfort food or a quick bite, as an alternative to eating out or making a far less-healthy choice. Easy to make and packed with both nutrition and flavor, it’s probably my favorite recipe I’ve ever made, period. Can’t thank you enough!!
Ha, I’m not sure about that. But, I’m happy you loved it! Thanks for taking the time to review, Jessie.
Hi Kate – I’m with Jessie, made this soup at least a half dozen times… Made it last year when my niece had her baby and brought it to the hospital (just before!) The other day I was chatting with her about it and she said it saved her life!! Now that’s a pretty serious endorsement:) Happy Valentine’s Day!
So easy and so delicious!Loved the subtleness of the spices. My husband and I ate it all over two days…
Awesome soup. My husband loved it. You are my go to person for all my vegetarian soup recipes.
Thanks
Anu
You’re welcome, Anu!
I don’t usually leave comments on recipe sites, but this, in my honest opinion, has to be the best lentil soup on the planet. I always keep a batch portioned out into containers in the freezer so I can have it whenever I want. And it is sublime with a baguette. I highly recommend you try it!
Thank you for taking the time to review, Jan! I’m happy you love it.
I have now made this several times and it has always been an absolute hit. Could eat this for days! Thank you so much for sharing
You’re welcome, Emilia! I appreciate your review.
Omg I love this soup!!! I didn’t have enough vegetable broth so I replaced the remaining amount with coconut milk and it worked just fine! This is so yummy and great for the winter. Thanks!
Well this recipe became an instant family favorite! I made it twice last week, followed the recipe exactly, but doubled it the second time because it gets even better as a leftover lunch and we all wanted a good sized serving. It raised the lowly lentil to the status of royalty for sure. What a phenomenal taste sensation!
I love that! Thank you for sharing.
This soup was so good! Simple, healthy, and delicious, even my picky 10 year old liked it! Thank you for a delicious soup to eat during this cold spell in chicago!
I’m glad you both loved it, Shermi! Thank you for sharing.
Thank you Kate. I am on a soup fast. Made the lentil soup now. Absolutely spicy, tasty and delicious. Thank you so much for sharing this recipe. I think I can live on these type of soups! Germaine
I’m delighted you loved it! Thank you for sharing.
It truly is the best lentil soup!. I made it and ate the whole pot in 2 days. So good! Getting ready to make it again.
Thanks
Lois
This is a keeper. Used a can of all-in-one Marzano tomatoes, because that’s what I had, and it worked fine. My meat loving husband served himself a big second bowl and said, “That’s good stuff!” I’m trying to eat lower on the food chain and turn to your recipes frequently. The favorite quinoa salad and romesco sauce are our favorites, too. Thank you!
Wonderful to hear, Caroline! Thank you for your review.
My group just finished eating this yummy soup. It was a hit all around and no-one even blinked that it was meatless. What a great flavor. I was reluctant to add the lemon juice, but am glad I did. The only changes, I added fresh mushrooms, doubled the amount of kale and omitted the cumin (only because I was out).
Really enjoyed the dish & look forward to the leftovers!
So tasty and hearty, perfect on a cold winter’s day. I substituted celery for collard greens/kale (as I wanted to use what I had on hand) and it was still delicious. Definitely will be making it again and again!
Do you have any advice on doubling the recipe? I love this recipe, but I don’t feel there are enough left-overs :)
This soup is simply delicious! With a few tweaks based on my tastebuds (omitted cumin) I can say with joy that I will make this soup often in the future
This was SO DELICIOUS!! I used cabbage instead of kale. So healthful, tasty, and warming!! Perfect with a drizzle of high quality fruity olive oil before serving.
This soup is the best—but I make it in my Instant Pot! I use an immersion blender for a few seconds for easier clean up. Excellent 5 stars
Your recipes never disappoint my family! This one is so delicious, too! I didn’t want waste 1/2 can of tomato, so I used 1 whole can, and reduced the amount of the water. I also add Japanese pumpkin as someone add sweet potato. Thank you for wonderful recipe:)
Thank you for letting me know that, June! I appreciate you taking the time to review.
Wow, this was absolutely delicious! I didn’t have any greens so omitted them but I did add a yellow pepper with the onion and carrots. I also included the liquid from the canned diced tomatoes.
That’s great to hear, Linda! Thanks for your review.
Wow, wow, wow! This was absolutely delicious! I didn’t have any greens so omitted them but I did add a yellow pepper with the onion and carrots. I also included the liquid from the canned diced tomatoes. Make sure you add the lemon juice … it finishes it off beautifully!
This recipe turned out pretty good I also ended up adding the zest of the lemon towards the beginning for extra flavor to be cooked in and swapped the colards for spinach since I don’t care for collards and it was great
Thank you for your review, Hayden!
Absolutely loved it! Easy to follow, amazing flavors.
Absolutely delicious! Forgot to add the lemon but felt like it was not needed. Will be making this again for sure!
I made this exact recipe for my family and it was a hit! This is an unusual meal for us as we are mostly a “meat and potatoes” kind of family but I wanted to try something healthy, easy, cheap to make, and vegetarian. Check, check, check, check. Even my 5 year old and 3 year old ate it with no complaints!! The recipe as listed was enough for our family of 4 for dinner and lunch the next day. Thank you so much for your great recipe. I will definitely be trying more of your recipes and sharing this with friends!