Lentil Soup
Alright, today I'm doing my version of Lentil Soup, I like to do it with the braised ham hock really flavors the stock nicely and just rich and delicious winter soup. So you're going to get one pork smoked ham hock, all right. That’s basically the high and the shank of the pig the lower ankle and its take a long time to braise but it’s totally worth it very delicious flavor. Were going to simmer it in some stock I'm going to go one quarter chicken stock and one quarter beef broth. So you what you can do two quarts of any kind of liquid basically but I'm going to use half chicken and half beef here. So its two quarts all together, all right, were going to bring that up to simmer I'm going to add some black pepper and a little bit of cayenne to taste does about a half of teaspoon. You're going to adjust all the stuff later of course with any soup.
One bay leaf and I think dried thyme is really nice with any kind of bean soup, for a Lentil so I'm going to go to dried thyme, any kind of dried herbs probably you're going to work here or your favorites. I'm not adding salt, okay, that is smoked ham hock it could be salty, I don’t know yet but were going to taste later. Put the lid on and simmer that on low for one hour and 30 minutes, see and you're improve crackers put on 30 minutes.
And then in hour and 30 minutes while that hock still is not tender but its starting to get there, the meat is starting to pull away from the bone, its still very, very though. So its going to need to cook for quite a while longer. But at this point were going to go ahead to add our mirepoix and now pardon my French but as you well know mirepoix is just celery, carrots and onion. Its usually two part onion, to one part celery, one part carrot so I did about two cups of onion, a cup of carrot and a cup of celery just diced up, it doesn’t have to be exact it soup for God sake. So I’ll put in your veggies, were going to cover this backup and were going to simmer this for 30 more minutes, okay, and graphic please. All right, so simmer that would leave the lid off for 30 minutes which you're going to find 30 minutes later. Okay, the vegetables are up pretty much cooked all right because that stock is giving you just incredibly thinner, for the smell is unbelievable, all right I sound like that mold again.
All right, now were going to lentils, two cups of green lentils. All kinds of lentils green, yellow red, so I’ll work for this I use green this time. Were going to put the lid on, all right, get ready for graphic, three minutes covered simmer for 30 more minutes on low, now you're going to take the lid off the lintels are not going to be cooked yet, they take about 40 minutes to 45 minutes. But they're going to be close, but for the rest of the cooking all right were going to leave the lid off, because we have to reduce a little bit and we also, you'll see how that start to simmer in that’s start to pushing the fat to the edges of the cattle. You can go and skin that all that came off at the top. And there about 20 minutes later my lentils were pretty much hydrated and there is my pork hock bone. That’s just the bone in left, there is the skin that came off. All right, and you can discard that skin if you want. Now I'm going to tell you then in some cultures that would be considered almost a crime that skin would probably fried up or roasted in and served with the soup or just separate dish.
But anyway, when I dish this soup I just took a couple, couple chunks of that beautiful succulent salt ham hock meat and garnish my couple ladles of lentil soup, the lentil is perfectly tender. I have my aromatic vegetables the mirepoix, put a bit of fresh parsley. And of course at the end I checked for salt and pepper and what a great soup, so easy I know its convenient, you open that kind of lintel soup but it’s a great excuse, you pick up one of those ham hocks or pork, smoked pork hocks at the butcher and couple of hours later you're in an incredibly delicious soup. Hope you give that a try and enjoy, and by the way this is our 100th video recipe, thank you very much.
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