Easy curried lentil soup made in the Instant Pot with red lentils, red curry paste, curry powder, ginger and garlic. This recipe is based on an Ottolenghi recipe on Epicurious.
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Some of my favorite recipes are from rummaging around my pantry. This soup was from just such a ransacking. I was in the mood for soup, and when I found 3 kinds of dried lentils, I knew a pot of curried lentil soup was in my future.
❤️ Why you'll love this recipe
- Only the yellow onion needs to be chopped, so there's very little prep involved in this recipe. Everything else is either in a can, jar, or tube.
- The Instant Pot speeds the cooking, so that this soup is ready in 30 minutes. Perfect for a weeknight meal.
🧅 Main Ingredients + Notes
For the all of the ingredients, measurements and directions, go to the Recipe Card at the bottom of this post.
- Yellow onion
- Garlic - Either garlic cloves or Gourmet Garden Garlic Paste sold in a tube, found with fresh herbs in your market.
- Ginger - Use Gourmet Garden ginger paste because it's soooo quick, or finely grate a ginger root.
- Curry powder
- Garam Masala - garam masala is a spice mix commonly used in Indian dishes. You should find it with the spices in your grocery store.
- Red curry paste
- Red lentils
- Chopped tomatoes - you can chop your own, but I use canned diced tomatoes.
- Vegetable broth - or Better Than Bouillon Roasted Vegetable Paste
- Coconut milk - I recommend full-fat.
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🔪 Recommended Equipment
👩🍳 Why This Recipe Works
- Lentils are often used in Indian dishes, particularly the softer lentils. These are the red, orange and yellow varieties, which are split legumes. This means they cook up quickly.
- Their earthy flavor and texture combine very well with coconut milk and curry.
- Additionally all lentils go great with chopped tomatoes, as their earthiness needs some acid.
👩🍳 Preparation Tips
- This soup can be made on the stovetop or an electric pressure cooker, such as an Instant Pot.
- I often use Better Than Bouillon for broth, and keep their Vegetable, No Chicken, and No Beef bouillons on hand. They last a long time, and are packed with flavor. If you use this product, however, eliminate the kosher salt as you will not need any additional salt. I recommend no more than 2 teaspoons of Better Than Bouillon added to the soup. If your markets don't have this product, you can order it online.
📇 Similar Legume Soups
If you've never tried black chickpeas, I highly recommend this Chana Masala with Black Chickpeas. The post explains what they are, how to work with them, and where to purchase them.
This Persian ashe mast soup is a chickpea yogurt soup made with yellow lentils. It's full of flavor from grated onion and fennel, various herbs, spices, and garlic. It's amazing, and totally unlike anything you've probably ever had. You can use canned chickpeas, or go here if you want to know how to cook chickpeas from dried.
Instant Pot Curried Lentil Soup
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 medium yellow onion, chopped (about 2 cups)
- 1 tablespoon garlic paste, or finely chopped garlic
- 1 tablespoon ginger paste, or 2 ½-inch piece of ginger, finely grated
- 1 tablespoon curry powder
- ½ teaspoon garam masala spice mix (see Notes)
- ½ teaspoon red curry paste
- ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
- ¾ cup red lentils
- 1 14.5-oz can chopped tomatoes, along with the sauce
- 2 ½ cups vegetable broth
- 1 13.5-oz can unsweetened coconut milk
Optional Toppings
- lime wedges, for serving
- ¼ cup chopped scallions, for garnish
- ¼ cup chopped cilantro, for garnish
Instructions
- Select the Sauté function on your Instant Pot (or other electric pressure cooker). In the inner cooking pot, heat the olive oil. Add the onions and sauté until softened and translucent, about 7 - 8 minutes. Be sure to stir them fairly often so they don't burn.
- Add the garlic, ginger, curry powder, garam masala, red curry paste, salt, red pepper flakes and pepper. Stir and sauté for about 3 minutes, until very fragrant.
- Stir in the lentils and tomato sauce, and cook for 2 minutes. Add the broth. Set aside ¼ cup of the coconut milk, and add the remaining coconut milk to the pot. Stir to combine. Pro-tip: If the coconut milk has separated in the can, pour it into a large bowl and whisk until re-combined.
- Lock the lid of the electric pressure cooker into place, making sure that the vent on top of the Instant Pot is in the closed position. Select Manual cooking and set the cooking time for 15 minutes.
- When the cooking is complete, Quick Release the vent to immediately release the pressure.
- Serve with the reserved coconut milk (to drizzle on top of the soup), scallions and lime wedges.
Notes
Nutrition
Kristina
Thanks for the breakdown of different lentils, good to know! Love how quickly this soup comes together in the IP. Great recipe!
The Wimpy Vegetarian
Thanks so much Kristina!! It's super quick thanks to the IP!
Tisha
Definitely something I need to warm up on these snow days we are having!!!
The Wimpy Vegetarian
You too?? We got several feet of snow last week alone!! And yes, dishes like this are perfect for snowy days and nights 🙂
Patty
What a heartwarming soup, exactly we need right now, can't wait to make this delicious soup!
Nathan Wyper
This looks so delicious, I make lentil soup all the time so next time i will change it up a bit by following this recipe!
Valentina
Hope you are recovering from the skiing incident. I assume this delicious helped you feel better. 🙂 I love the description of all of the different colors of lentils. Such a great resource. I'm bookmarking it! This dish is perfect for our rainy weather in LA. (Nothing like the snow, I'm sure.) 😉
Eha
Thank you for both a great soup recipe and the breakdown of the various lentils on the market - very useful tho' in Australia we mostly buy red and Puy lentils. Have loved lentil soup since childhood in Northern Europe - now mainly cooking Asian and Middle-Eastern fare spicier versions are on the table . . . garam masala is a very common spice mix in most pantries here. Hope that your ACL miraculously just got sprained . . . a fortnight back I dropped a major weight on my big toe breaking it and still have four weeks to go before I shall have proper mobility talk about painful !!! Best to you: do hope you won't need surgery ., . .
Madison from cookwarestuff
wow...this looks sooo good & delicious, and this is perfect soup in this snow days....i will definitely trying to making this in upcoming weekend...Thanks fro sharing.....and keep shared your new dishes....!
Alice Beef
My son loves to eat soup and your recipe gives me a lot of useful ideas to prepare the healthy meal for him. Thank you so much for your creative and sharing.
Goli
So delicious!!! Thank you for this wonderful recipe
The Wimpy Vegetarian
You're so welcome! I'm very happy you liked it so much!!