Kisses&Carrots

Pumpkin Lentil Soup

Fall is here and it’s time to celebrate all things pumpkin! So, I thought I would share my recipe for Pumpkin Lentil Soup. Though in all honesty, we eat this soup year round. In fact, it’s one of two soups that I make on a weekly basis and divide into 16-oz wide-mouth mason jars to use for our daily lunches.

It’s super easy to make, and is probably the healthiest meal I cook. In fact, I’ll share a secret with you: about three years ago my husband and I switched to a mostly plant-based lifestyle. For him, it was to help him be healthier and to lose weight. For me, it was to reduce the inflammation in my body caused by my endometriosis and to help reduce my pain levels.

When we are stricter with our food choices (which definitely isn’t all the time—heck, we ate pizza just last night!) we see major results. My hubby actually lost over 40lbs (and has kept it off) just by embracing the plant-based lifestyle. And this soup was definitely one of the keys to making that switch successful. Having these soups in the fridge in portion-sized jars ready to go for lunches made all the difference in the world. Plus, it saves us about $50 a week on lunches!

Pumpkin Lentil Soup

a healthy, yummy vegan soup chock full of veggies, protein and fiber
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 20 mins
Cook Time 40 mins
Pressurizing and De-pressurizing 40 mins
Total Time 1 hr 40 mins
Course Main Course, Soup
Cuisine American
Servings 10

Equipment

  • Instant Pot or Electric Pressure Cooker
  • (Blender—optional)
  • (Garlic Press—optional)

Ingredients
  

  • 1 large onion
  • 2 cups lentils
  • 1 15 oz can 100% pumpkin
  • 2 14.5 oz can unsalted diced tomatoes
  • 3 large carrots
  • 3 cloves garlic
  • 1 large stalk of celery
  • 1 10 oz bag frozen chopped spinach
  • 6 cups filtered water
  • ½ tsp avocado or coconut oil
  • 1 TB Spike Gourmet Natural Seasoning Mix

Instructions
 

  • Dice onion into small pieces (or skip this step and use a 10-oz package of frozen diced onion)
  • Use ½ tsp avocado or coconut oil to grease bottom of Instant Pot.
  • Set Instant Pot to "saute" setting, and dump in the onions. Let the onion saute while you prepare the rest of the veggies. You may need to stir occasionally to keep it from burning.
  • Wash celery and carrots. Peel the carrots. Dice the carrots and celery.* (Or see note below and just blend them in the blender.)
  • Open the cans of diced tomatoes and add them to the sauteing onions in the Instant Pot.
  • Add the diced carrots and celery to the Instant Pot.
  • Use a garlic press to crush the garlic and add it to the Instant Pot.*
  • Add the 6 cups of filtered water to the Instant Pot.
  • Dump in the frozen chopped spinach.
  • Open the can of pumpkin and dump that in, also.
  • Rinse the lentils and dump them into the Instant Pot.
  • Stir everything. Then, seal Instant Pot and set to 40 minutes on high pressure.
  • After it has finished cooking, allow to de-pressurize naturally for 20 minutes. Then vent manually.
  • Add about 1 TB Spike spice mix and stir. Then serve, or divvy up into jars for later meals.

Notes

*There’s a lot of chopping of vegetables involved in this recipe. Who has the time for that? Feel free to skip all that if you don’t have the time. I don’t think I’ve chopped any of the vegetables for this in years. Instead, I use a bag of frozen diced onions, and I toss all the rest of the veggies (celery, carrots, garlic and sometimes even the frozen chopped spinach) in my blender with some of the water and I blend it. It saves a ton of time and work. Sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly lazy or pressed for time, I even use a cup of peeled baby carrots in place of the 3 large carrots and save myself the time of washing and peeling them. It is what it is. The end result is not as pretty as if you had chopped everything, but it tastes the same and saves you at least 10-15 minutes.
Also, make sure you don’t add the spice mix (I love Spike Gourmet Natural Seasoning brand) until everything has finished cooking. The high heat and high pressure of the Instant Pot break down the spices, so you get more bang for your buck if you add them at the end.
Keyword easy healthy meal, high fiber, high protein, lentils, lots of veggies, pumpkin, soup, vegan

As I said, this soup has a special place in my heart and life. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do. And if you decide that you want to jar this up for lunches, I recommend using the 16-oz wide mouth Ball canning jars combined with these Ball wide mouth leakproof lids from Target. Because, seriously, no one wants soup leaking all over their work bag. Been there, done that, done the laundry it caused!

Happy cooking!