One-Pot Hearty Lentil Soup
with Carrots, Celery, Kidney Beans & Sour Cream
- Milk
This hearty vegetarian soup is packed with two types of plant-based protein—lentils and beans—and loads of veggies. Tender lentils simmer with carrots, celery, and onion in a delicately spiced vegetable broth, and kidney beans add body and richness. Serve with a dollop of sour cream and chopped chives for a final flourish.
Ingredients
3 unit
Veggie Stock Concentrate
3 tablespoon
Sour Cream
(Contains: Milk)
1 unit
Kidney Beans
1 unit
Tomato Paste
6 ounce
Carrot
1 unit
Onion
1 teaspoon
Cumin
1 unit
Lentils
1 teaspoon
Chili Powder
¼ ounce
Chives
1 teaspoon
Garlic Powder
2.5 ounce
Celery
Not included in your delivery
2 teaspoon (tsp)
Cooking Oil
teaspoon (tsp)
Salt
teaspoon (tsp)
Black Pepper
Nutrition Values
Utensils
Cooking Steps
Wash and dry produce. Halve, peel, and dice onion into ½-inch pieces. Trim, peel, and halve carrots lengthwise; slice crosswise into ¼-inch half-moons. Halve celery lengthwise; thinly slice crosswise into pieces. Drain and rinse lentils.
In a medium pot (large pot for 4 servings), heat a large drizzle of oil over medium-high heat. Add onion, carrots, celery, salt, and pepper; cook, stirring occasionally, until veggies are slightly softened, 2-3 minutes.
Add garlic powder, chili powder, cumin, and tomato paste; cook, stirring, until fragrant, 30-60 seconds.
Stir in 2½ cups water (5 cups for 4 servings), lentils, and stock concentrates, scraping up any browned bits from bottom of pot. Bring to a simmer; cook, uncovered, until slightly reduced, 5-7 minutes.
Meanwhile, empty kidney beans and their liquid into a medium bowl. Mash with a potato masher or fork until beans are mostly smooth (this will help thicken the soup).
Once soup has simmered 5-7 minutes, stir mashed beans into soup. Return to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cook, stirring occasionally, until soup thickens, 3-5 minutes more. Taste and season with salt and pepper if desired.
While soup simmers, thinly slice chives.
Divide soup between bowls. Dollop with sour cream and sprinkle with chives. Serve.
Customer reviews
Review summary
Updated on Dec 2025- Flavor: Many enjoyed the hearty, flavorful soup, though some found it surprisingly spicy; consider using less chili powder to taste 🌶️.
- Ease of prep: Quick and simple to make, but some suggest cooking vegetables longer for better texture.
- Suggestions: Try adding sausage, extra herbs, or a splash of lemon juice for more depth; serve with crusty bread or cornbread.
- Portions: Generously sized; several customers mentioned having leftovers or stretching it to more servings.
- Texture: Some preferred a thicker consistency; consider adding more lentils or mashing only part of the kidney beans.
Reviews from our home cooks
Surprised at how tasty this was; even tastier when I accidentally let it simmer longer than it was supposed to and made it more stew-like. Note, though, that all of HF recipes drastically underestimate how long the prep takes, even for something as simple as this. Five minutes prep? Nuh-uh. Chopping celery, carrots, and onions, draining and rinsing lentils, and mashing the beans - all in 5 minutes? Nope, more like 15 minutes or a smidge more. But very tasty.
I loved the lentil soup. It was so hearty and satisfying. I still have so much left over. I found adding sour cream to it took away some of the heat from the cumin.
Very filling and flavorful. I liked the kidney beans to give it a bit of thickness along with the lentils. Sour cream helped round it all out.
I always wanted to learn how to make lentil soup and I cannot stress how thankful I am that I learned and it was delicious very healthy as well.
This recipe makes a good volume of soup and we liked the lentils in it. But it is very two dimensional in taste. You really just get cumin and heat. I added paprika, oregano, cilantro. With the canned beans, it does need a good bit of salt too. Would get again.
Do not know a lot about lentil's did not even know they could come in a can. The mashing of the beans was hard to do with a fork so I used a blender. All in all we really liked this meal, made some corn bread with it and it was a great dinner. Will purchase this again.
Quite Spicy; maybe would be good to say to put chili powder in to taste instead of all of it. We used extra red kidney beans because we like them so much. We smashed one of the cans of kidney beans and then left the other can of kidney beans whole. Delicious!
The soup was delicious but I had a couple issues with it. We followed the instructions fully but the carrots were way too hard. I think cutting them into quarters would be a lot better. Also our instructions had pictures that didn't match with the soup we made super well.
The instructions left the veggies a little too undercooked for our liking. If we order it again, we'd cook the onion, carrot, and celery longer.
Nice and spicy. So hearty we got twice the servings out of it.
