It is an Italian tradition to ring in the New Year with Lentil Soup. Lentils symbolize coins and represent good luck and prosperity!
The base of this soup is often made with the ham bone that is leftover from Christmas dinner. But what if you didn’t cook a ham? We decided to forego the Spiral Ham this year in favor of a pork roast. Ham is high in sodium and we did not want to be eating it for days.
So for this soup, I decided to go a different route, back to our Thanksgiving dinner when I made several containers of rich, golden Turkey Stock. I added some finely chopped ham steak at the end and it came out delicious!
Best of all, this soup has no pasta and most of the ingredients are naturally gluten free! Happy New Year and Buon Anno from My Gluten Free Cucina!
6-8 Servings
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Ingredients:
- 1 medium sweet onion, diced
- 2 celery stalks, diced
- 2 carrots, diced
- olive oil
- 2 cups gluten free beef broth
- 2 cups gluten free chicken or vegetable broth (I used one of each)
- 1/2 tsp. sage
- 1/2 tsp. thyme
- 1 bay leaf
- ground pepper
- 1-1/2 cups of homemade stock (turkey, chicken, or ham)
- 16 oz. bag green lentils
- 8 oz. boneless smoked ham steak
Preparation:
Prep the veggies and dice them all the same size. Heat olive oil in a 4 qt. soup pot. Add the veggies and stir to coat with oil. Cook for 5 minutes until they begin to soften.
Add the broth, stock and seasonings. Bring to a simmer.
Thoroughly rinse and inspect the lentils, taking care to pick out any odd grains (like barley) that may have snuck in.
Add the lentils to the pot, cover and simmer on low heat for 45 minutes.
Partially puree the soup with a stick blender. Be sure to pull out the bay leaf first! Chop the ham into fine dice and add to the soup at the end of cooking (the ham should be fully cooked).
This soup is stick to your ribs thick! If you would like to thin it out a bit, you can add more broth.
Notes ♪♫ Notice I don’t list salt in the ingredients? We are limiting salt in our diets, and I used unsalted ingredients (including the broth) all the way through except for the ham. That 8 oz. ham steak has 1893 grams of salt ????, more than enough to flavor an entire pot of soup! And just to put it in perspective, we will have 8 servings from this pot, so that is 237 grams per serving. Whew! Of course, if salt is not an issue you can make a stock from your leftover ham bone, it’s a great way to use up every bit of goodness from that holiday meal!
