Lentil Soup

This lentil soup was so boss! I ate it with some toasted baguette from Bread Euphoria. Bread Euphoria makes good bread, but it's all sour. I find that somewhat annoying. Anyway, the boss lentil soup. Put your listening hats on.

Start with a really fatty hunk of oxtail. Trim the excess fat from the bone, a golf ball amount. Put the fat into a sauce pan and add some olive oil, a marble of oil. Pop the fat into a 200 degree oven and forget about it for a couple hours. Meanwhile, simmer the bone and mire poix (2 parts onion, 1 part carrot, 1 part celery) in water for the same amount of time. When both are done, stock and fat, chill them. In the morning, skim and strain the stock.

Those are some envelopes I decorated and hung on my dining room wall. They have nothing to do with soup.

So your next order of business is to actually make your soup. Scoop your solidified beef fat into a big soup pot over medium, medium-high heat. Add your small dice of equal parts carrot and onion. (I crushed some coriander seeds and one matchbook chili, and added them at the same time.) Saute this stuff for a few minutes. Then add your minced garlic (however many cloves you like) and cook until the garlic aroma is obvious (about 30 seconds). Now plop in two big dollops of tomato paste and cook all of this until the paste begins to look rusty. Have you picked through your lentils yet? Good. Shovel in, oh, around three cups of dry lentils. Get a wooden spoon and mix everything up. Keep cooking this mixture until the lentils start to get a little toasty. Your nose should recognize the change in smell. When it does, add your beef stock. If there is not enough stock to completely cover your lentils and then some, add some water. If you have some fresh thyme, throw in some sprigs, bring the whole thing to a boil, and simmer on low heat, uncovered, for about an hour (or until everything is fully cooked). If you need to add water, do so. If you want to incrementally salt your soup while it cooks, do so. I find that helps, but you can always salt at the end.

That's it. Eat your soup.