Instant Pot Spanish Lentil Soup
A delicious authentic Spanish soup, a staple in Spanish cuisine now made easier by pressure cooking it in your Instant Pot
Equipment
- 1 Instant Pot or pressure cooker
Ingredients
- 1 large onion or 2 small ones
- 3 cloves
garlic
- 1 large carrot
- 1 red pepper
- 200 g potatoes peeled weight
- 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
- 100 g cooking chorizo if you want to make it vegetarian or vegan, skip the chorizo and increase the paprika
- 150 g chopped tomatoes
- 1 tablespoon sweet paprika more if making it vegan
- 300 g
dried green lentils
want to make it with dried red split lentils? Try this recipe instead
- 1 bay leaf
- 1.3 litres water from the cold tap
- 1 tablespoon homemade vegetable stock paste make your own vegetable stock paste with our recipe (you can also use my gammon stock or chicken stock)
- Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
You have two options, the “stick it all in, press a button and put your feet up” option (in which case you can literally place all the ingredients in your Instant Pot and go directly to step 5) OR the Sauté option, in which case follow steps 1, 2, 3 and 5.
- Chop onion and garlic. Dice carrot and pepper (in Thermie just chop onion garlic and carrot 5 seconds, speed 5, then add the pepper for 2 more seconds at speed 5). Reserve. Dice peeled potatoes. Reserve in a different bowl.
- Press Sauté button (NO need to wait until the display says HOT), add the teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil, add chorizo and stir, let it sauté for approx. 2-3 minutes to release the juices.
- Add onions, garlic, red pepper and sauté for about 5 minutes.
- Press Keep Warm/Cancel and add chopped tomatoes, paprika and potatoes, give it a stir and add the lentils, bay leaf, water, stock, salt and pepper (I use a few twists of the black pepper mill).
- Lock the lid in. Steam release handle pointing to Sealing. Press Manual, use the – and + buttons to programme 5 minutes. Do a natural release* at the end. You can let the rest of the steam out 8-10 minutes into the natural release by turning the steam release handle from Sealing to Venting OR you can let it go to Keep Warm, you choose.
Notes
Note: you can bulk it up with more vegetables of course.
*Terminology
Quick release (also called quick pressure release or QPR) means venting the steam as soon as the pressure cooking process finishes, i.e. moving the steam release handle from Sealing to Venting.
Natural release (also called natural pressure release or NPR) means letting the float valve pop back down of its own accord, so basically you don’t need to do anything at the end and can keep your feet up. If it takes over 15 minutes, you're ok to release the rest of the steam (by turning the steam release handle to Venting) that may be left in order to unlock and open the lid.
Sometimes you'll see me talk of a combination of NPR followed by a QPR. For example, a recipe can have a 4 minute NPR followed by a QPR. This means that you wait for 4 minutes at the end of the pressure cooking time and then do a QPR by moving the steam release handle from Sealing to Venting.
Tried this recipe?Mention @feistytapas or tag #feistytapas!
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