Slow Cooker Lentil & Sausage Soup Recipe

This lentil soup is hearty and comforting and great for those nights when you need something to warm your tummy. It's super easy to make and it has a great balance of veggies and the delicious taste you can only get from sausage. My kids, like most, are not big veggie eaters.  But they eat this soup! They are suckers for anything with sausage in it.  When I serve it to the kids I put a big dollop of sour cream on top - they seem to like it better with the creaminess, and it's a great way to cool it off quickly. One of my kids actually loves this so much that she requested the leftovers for breakfast the next day, and for snack when she got home from school.

The beauty of this type of recipe is in its flexibility.  You can make this however you want, so please use this recipe as a guideline, not as a strict rule.  If you like more or less or something, go for it. Change the type of sausage (or use meatballs or chicken), try different veggies, and different spices. That's the great thing about soup - you can personalize it and never make it the same twice!

Ingredients:

• 1 package of sausage - usually a little over a pound. 
• 1 onion
• 1 carrot
• 1 stalk of celery
• 2 cloves of garlic (or 2 teaspoons crushed)
• 3 quarts chicken broth
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 1 1/2 cups dry lentils 
• 1 head of cauliflower
• 1 bunch of kale, or other greens.
• salt & pepper to taste
• Other herbs or seasoning to taste. 

This works with basically any kind of sausage you like.  I usually use brats or Italian sausage because I like the flavor.  But if you want a little spice you could use a spicy sausage.  Or if you want to keep it a little lighter you could use a chicken sausage.  

You can also use any kind of lentils.  Different kinds will have different textures when cooked, and take different cooking times, so just experiment and use ones you like.  Red and orange lentils cook faster and have a softer texture when cooked.  Green and black ones tend to hold their shape better. The one pictured was a very generic package of green lentils, I often have those on hand because they are usually the cheapest. 

If you have homemade broth (here's how I make it), then that will kick this up into the ultra amazing category - it just adds so much flavor.  But this is still great with store bought broth, and obviously that makes it very easy. 

You could totally leave out the tomatoes if you're not a tomato person.  I like to add them because I think the slight acidity goes well with the lentils and sausage. It's not enough that it seems like a very tomato-ey soup, but it's just enough to add a depth of flavor. 

I like to hold off on the salt until I've got it all put together and simmering, because depending on the type of sausage and broth you use, it salt level is really going to vary.  Some are very salty, some are not.  Get it all assembled and then give the broth a taste, and then season as you think it needs.  And here's where you can get creative: add other spices to give it a totally different flavor.  If you want an Indian type flavor, add some curry powder.  Or add cumin and extra garlic.  Or for a more Italian flavor add some basil and oregano, or just an Italian seasoning blend.  Or add a little cumin and chili powder for more of a southwest flavor.  The possibilities are endless. Or keep it simple with just salt and pepper and you will still love it!

Directions:

• If you are starting with uncooked sausage, squeeze them out of the casings into little lumps, the size of small meatballs. Heat a heavy bottom pot (or the insert for your stove-top slow cooker), and add sausage balls.  You don't need oil because the sausage is going to release plenty of fat. Brown all over.
• Chop onion, carrot, celery, and garlic, and add to the pot with the browned sausage.  Saute until onions are getting soft. 
• Add chicken broth and can of tomatoes (with juice!). Bring to a simmer, and then add dry lentils. 
• Chop cauliflower and greens and add to the pot. 
• Cover and simmer for at least an hour. 

I like to make this in my slow cooker.  I have a slow cooker with a metal insert, so I can do all the browning and sauteing on the stove right in the slow cooker pot, and then move it to the cooker to simmer. (This is the slow cooker I have, and I love it!) I will throw this together in the afternoon, and then let it simmer on low for 3 hours or so while I go to the after school run around, and we come home to dinner ready to eat.  But you can just as easily do this all on the stove. 

Shortcut:

If you want to make this really fast, use pre-cooked lentils and cooked sausage. You can get a package of pre-cooked lentils at Trader Joes or most grocery stores.  Use the whole package.  Saute all your veggies, cut your sausage into chunks, and then add all the other ingredients. Cut the broth to just 1 1/2 or 2 quarts, depending on how brothy you like it. Simmer for 20-30 minutes, just until the veggies are cooked to your liking.  It's an easy way to make a super quick weeknight meal. 

Easy Weeknight Lentil & Meatball Soup

One of the things that I hope people can learn from me is how a little bit of planning ahead can make your life so much easier!  A huge benefit of creating a weekly meal plan is that you have taken the time to think through how you can use leftovers from one meal as the basis for another meal later in the week.  You can plan ahead for how you can cook once for multiple meals.

So what I'm sharing with you in this post isn't so much of a recipe, but it's an example of how I've used my plan and cooked ahead to make a super easy weeknight meal that tastes like it cooked for hours.  

This is a lentil soup with homemade chicken stock, roasted vegetables, and homemade turkey meatballs.  Sounds like it would take hours to make, doesn't it?  No, it was a less than an hour (like 45 minutes really), from start to finish (and only that long because I started with dry lentils).

Ingredients:

• 2 quarts of homemade chicken broth
• Several cups of roasted vegetables - this one had cauliflower, onions, mushrooms, and celery, that had been roasted with Za'atar (a middle eastern spice blend), olive oil, garlic and salt
• 2 cups of dry lentils
• 12 - 18 frozen homemade meatballs
• 1 bunch of fresh spinach, roughly chopped.

How I did it:

Because I had the stock already made, the veggies already roasted and the meatballs already in my freezer, this came together in just a few minutes.  Put the broth, lentils and veggies in the pot and let them simmer for a half hour or so until the lentils are mostly cooked.  Then add the frozen meatballs and spinach and simmer long enough for the meatballs to be fully heated through.  That's it.  Serve. 

If you want this to be even faster you could buy a package of precooked lentils  Trader Joe's has them and some grocery stores do now too.  If you use precooked lentils then I would just hold back on a cup or two of the broth.  Or you can just use a kind of dry lentil that cooks fast - I used these red lentils, and they cook in about 30 minutes. 

A little more background on how this came together - so you can get the point of planning ahead that I'm talking about:

1. Last Saturday we had turkey burgers for dinner.  At the same time as I was making the burgers, I mixed up extra meat and made some meatballs as well.  The recipe was just 1 tablespoon of Za'atar, 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 egg for every pound of ground turkey. Easy.  I tripled that so we had plenty of burgers and a couple dozen meatballs. I put the meatballs in the oven at 400 for 20 minutes while we ate dinner, let them cool, and put in the freezer after dinner. 
2. On Sunday we had roast chicken and veggies for dinner.  I always cook 2 chickens and I roast them on top of a whole bunch of veggies so that we will have lots left over.  The veggies for that dinner were the cauliflower, onion, mushroom and celery. 
3. After that dinner I put the chicken carcasses in my slow cooker with a few ends of veggies (celery, carrot, onion), some salt, and cover with water, and I set that to cook on low for 10 hours (overnight), and then again all the rest of the next day and the next night (yes, I cook my stock for at least a day and a half).
4. On Tuesday morning I strain the stock and put it in the fridge. 
5. At about 5:15 I got everything out, poured the stock in the pot and added my lentils and veggies.  Then the meatballs and spinach a half an hour later.  And we were eating dinner by 6:00. 

It really doesn't get much easier than that.  Everything homemade and from scratch, made ahead by just taking a little extra time after cooking a couple of other meals.  You can totally do this.