{"id":28752,"date":"2025-04-07T09:40:01","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T13:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bowlofdelicious.com\/?p=28752"},"modified":"2025-04-07T09:40:05","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T13:40:05","slug":"spring-lentil-vegetable-soup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bowlofdelicious.com\/spring-lentil-vegetable-soup\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring Lentil Vegetable Soup with Fresh Herb Pistou"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This Spring Lentil Vegetable Soup features all your favorite in-season vibrant green produce, like leeks, asparagus, and peas. An fresh spring herb pistou (a sauce similar to pesto)<\/em> is spooned on top of each bowl, adding zingy, fresh, garlicky flavor. This soup is incredibly healthy and green vegetable-forward, yet hearty and filling with the added lentils. My honest description here is that it tastes like a salad, but it’s a soup! Perfect for that chilly early spring weather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In New England, spring is fickle. It will be warm, the birds will start chirping, the bulbs will start shooting up from the ground. And within a few days, you’re faced with chilly, rainy weather again. This spring lentil vegetable soup is perfect for those kinds of days. When fresh green plants and food are on your mind, but your body still needs something warm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My favorite thing about this soup is how fresh<\/em> it tastes. The quick cooking veggies – asparagus and peas – are stirred in at the end of cooking for only a few minutes until they’re crisp-tender. Very often, soups include veggies that are cooked to smithereens or pureed. But sometimes you don’t want your veggies to be mushy, you know? These have the perfect amount of bite that adds to the super fresh taste of the soup. This is a soup you chew.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And about that spring herb pistou… <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When that fresh, garlicky spring herb pistou is stirred into the soup? It’s like you’re eating a garden (in a good way)<\/em>. I used my favorite spring herbs – chives, mint, cilantro, and dill – to make the pistou, but you can use basically whatever herbs you like or have available to you. A pistou is a French herb sauce very similar to the more familiar pesto, and it often omits the cheese and nuts you’ll find in Italian pesto sauces. The herbs are pulverized in a food processor with fresh garlic, olive oil, lemon, and crushed red pepper into the most amazing fresh sauce. Next time, I’ll double it to spread on sandwiches or spoon on top of scrambled eggs!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ingredients and Substitutions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n