Last month I decided to try one of my recipes for the ladies coming to my cookie exchange party. I chose the French lentil soup. It sounded easy and delicious. But since it was the busy holiday season and I was in a hurry and I was not able to locate all the ingredients the recipe called for, so I did my best choosing substitutes. But once the holidays wrapped up, I decided to make the recipe as intended and blog about a battle of fancy ingredients.
The recipe called for French lentils, also known as lentils du Puy. These are supposed to be the "caviar of lentils" but instead, they are just impossible to find in the South Bay. After checking 2 Whole Foods and a variety of other specialty grocery stores, I finally gave in and purchased some plain, organic bulk lentils. Still, I wasn't thrilled about this substitute. How can I make FRENCH lentil soup with out the French? But time was ticking and I had just one day before the party, so I gave in to the ordinary lentils. To make matters worse, the Whole Foods I visited did not have kielbassa, so I chose a linguica.
Making the soup was very easy. I chopped the carrots, celery and sausage. I cheated this time and bought pre-chopped onions from Whole Foods. They are more expensive but save me time and tears, so I decided to splurge. I sauteed the veggies in olive oil until soft and then added the sausage, garlic and thyme and cooked for a minute or so more. Next, I added the broth, bay leafs and lentils and brought the soup to a simmer. I simmered on low heat for an hour and the soup was done and delicious. Since this was for a party, I prepared it the day before and reheated slowly before I served it to my guests.
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| I doubled the sausage for a hearty soup |
Everyone loved the soup! I heard nothing but good things. BUT... I couldn't help but think that the soup would be even better with the caviar of lentils.
So I decided to make the soup a second time just as the recipe calls for. Without a time constraint, I was able to order the lentils off of Amazon. I did my research and found a vendor that promised they were imported from France and had a "AOP" on the box-- indicating the region of France (Appellation d'Origine Protegee). This should indicate they are the REAL French lentils and not an impostor. The price was also an indication. A bag of regular lentils is about $2 per pound. French lentils are $11 per pound or more (NOT including shipping)! Yikes! This better be good! The linguica was easy to find (considering I knew not to go to Whole Foods), so I whipped up my second batch.
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| Lentils du Puy |
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| Regular lentils (organic) |
And how did the fancy lentil stack up against the regular lentils? Drum roll, please. The fancy soup was a little better, but not worth an extra $15! The Puy lentils we very pretty. They cooked faster and stayed more firm than the regular lentils. They were supposed to add a "peppery" taste, and they did. But throwing some pepper in the regular lentil soup worked just as well. I did prefer the Keilbassa, but the bottom line is that neither of the ingredient swaps would make or break the soup if you value time & money. And with the kudos I received after serving the first batch, I don't think my guests minded either. I even had a request for the recipe from a friend's 10 year old daughter. So I would call this a winner!
Sadly, I ate the soup up (both times) before I took a picture. But this soup wasn't going to win any presentation awards, so please enjoy the pics of the lentils above. So what do I do with the remainder of my French lentils? Maybe I'll try them in a recipe other than soup to see how they taste on their own. If you care to read more, I added links at the end of this post about the French lentils and some recipes.
Ingredients
2 Tablespoons Olive oil / from home
9 cups beef broth / $2.89 + $0.99 = $3.88 / Lucky's
1 cup carrots / $0.99/ lb = $0.50 / Lucky's
1/2 cup celery / $1.69 / Lucky's
1/2 cup diced onions / $2.49 / Lucky's
3 garlic cloves garlic, finely chopped / from home
12 oz Keilbassa / $3.79 / Lucky's
2 teaspoons dried thyme / from home
2 bay leafs / from home
2 cups (1 pound) French lentils / $17.49
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 60 minutes
Servings: 8
Taste: 4 stars
Prep: easy!
Cost: $29.84 ($3,73/ appetizer serving)
All about lentils
Puy lentil salad with beetroot
Warm lentil and smoked pork belly salad
