This fragrant Indian Mulligatawny Soup recipe is spiced with curry and made from creamy red lentils, carrots, apples, and coconut milk. Make a double batch and freeze the leftovers!
I want to spend the next month eating nothing but this Indian soup.
I have a terrible habit of over-doing it at the Indian food buffet, to the point where I have to un-do the button on my jeans and pull my shirt down over the top of my pants while I waddle out to the car.
This soup absolutely triggered that same can’t-stop-eating feeling, and I didn’t regret it one bit!
How to Make Mulligatawny Soup
Just look at these beautiful ingredients! Lentils, apples, ginger, garlic, onions, red jalapenos, carrots and fragrant spices.
It’s so thick it’s almost more like a stew.
Melt the butter in a large pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the onion, carrot, and jalapeno, then sauté for 4 to 5 minutes or until the onions have softened.
Add the garlic, ginger, apples, and diced tomatoes to the pot. Sauté for another 3 minutes.
Then add in all of the spices and toss to coat.
Add in the lentils and broth and let the contents come to a boil. Turn the heat down to medium-low and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes.
Puree about 75% of the ingredients using either an immersion blender after transferring a portion of the contents to a bowl to not be pureed. If you don’t have an immersion blender, then you can transfer a portion of the contents a standard blender. Leaving some of the chunks whole adds a nice texture and consistency to the soup.
Return the soup to the pot if needed.
Then stir in the coconut milk. Taste, and adjust salt and black pepper as needed.
Serve topped with cashew and scallions along with naan bread for dipping.
It’s a masterpiece! For your mouth!
Vegetarian Mulligatawny soup is a traditional Indian dish and the recipe is really easy to make.
Don’t be intimidated by the ingredient list, it just calls for a bunch of familiar produce and a little digging around in your spice rack.
I used my very favorite cooking pot for this Mulligatawny recipe, but any good-sized pot should do the trick.
Many Mulligatawny Soup recipes call for pureeing all of the ingredients until completely smooth.
I prefer a little more texture than that in my meals, so I left lots of delicious chunks of apples, carrot, onions, and tomatoes to add a bit of interest.
I used my special hand blender for this, but you could also use a regular counter top blender to do the job.
This soup is full of vibrant flavor but is also warm and comforting. Perfect for this time of year, and just insanely delicious with a piece of homemade naan bread.
I used to be so afraid of making soups because I thought they would take all day and require all sorts of crazy steps (I think I get this idea from Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon).
This just takes about 15 minutes of real work.
Well, what are you waiting for?
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Here’s the Recipe!
Indian Mulligatawny Soup
This fragrant Indian Mulligatawny Soup is spiced with curry and made from creamy red lentils, carrots, apples, and coconut milk. Make a double batch and freeze the leftovers!
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup butter (or olive oil for vegan)
- 1 yellow onion, chopped
- 1 carrot, peeled and diced
- 1 red jalapeno, seeded and diced
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 teaspoons peeled and minced ginger root
- 2 small firm apples, peeled, cored and diced
- 1 (14.5 oz) can diced tomatoes
- 1 tablespoon curry powder
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon paprika
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
- 1/2 cup red lentils (uncooked)
- 3 cups chicken or vegetable broth
- 2/3 cup canned unsweetened coconut milk
- Salt and black pepper to taste
- Roasted cashews for garnish
- Chopped cilantro and/or scallions for garnish
Instructions
- Melt the butter in a large pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the onion, carrot, and jalapeno, then saute for 4 to 5 minutes or until the onions have softened.
- Add the garlic, ginger, apples, and diced tomatoes to the pot. Saute for another 3 minutes, then add in all of the spices and toss to coat. Add in the lentils and broth and let the contents come to a boil. Turn the heat down to medium-low and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes.
- Puree about 75% of the ingredients using either an immersion blender or by transferring a portion of the contents to the bowl of a standard blender. Leave some of the chunks whole, as it adds a nice texture and consistency to the soup. Return the soup to the pot if needed, then stir in the coconut milk. Taste, and adjust salt and black pepper as needed.
- Serve topped with cashew and scallions along with naan bread for dipping.
Nutrition
Yield:
6Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 297|Total Fat: 18g|Saturated Fat: 8g|Trans Fat: 0g|Unsaturated Fat: 8g|Cholesterol: 84mg|Sodium: 403mg|Carbohydrates: 16g|Fiber: 5g|Sugar: 8g|Protein: 19g|
Nutrition information has been auto-calculated for your convenience.
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April 19, 2016 | Last Updated on March 9, 2021 by Linda
I have checked several times, there doesn’t seem to be an amount of Red Lentils specified in the ingredients list. Or am I suffering from male domestic blindness….which I am frequently accused of.
Thanks,
Robert,
Far North NZ
Hi Robert,
There are a lot of ingredients in this recipe, but the lentils amount is in there: 1/2 cup red lentils (uncooked).
– Linda
This recipe is quite possibly the best thing I’ve ever cooked. It also may be one of the best things I’ve ever eaten, period.
I eat exclusively plant-based home cooking and am always on the lookout for new recipes to try. This one is an instant favorite. I made it with about one-third less broth than called for to make it thicker and more of a stew, and subbed one tablespoon of olive oil for the butter. I felt like it definitely didn’t need so much oil. Served it with a squeeze of lime over wilted spinach and bulgar to get my grains and greens it. It turned out AMAZING.
Thank you so much for sharing this recipe. Shamefully, this is is the first time I’ve ever bothered to leave a review for a recipe. This one really deserves it!
Hi Trish,
Thank you for leaving this review and for sharing your changes to this recipe!
– Linda
I can’t tell how old this recipe is so not sure if this comment will get lost. It looks amazing! I’d like to make this for my family but my son is spice-averse. Can I make it sans-jalapeño and then add some red pepper flakes at the end to a portion of the recipe, or will that completely change the flavor?
Hi Devon,
Sure, make it your own, it will be fine to do it as you suggest.
– Linda
I made the stop, tasty, but as in most Indian recipes, I believe the spices should go in the the onions. The spices seem rather raw to me, need more. The colour is different, as I added a cup or so of Butter Chicken sauce that I had made earlier. Great recipe, but I will toast spices in the future. Lila Gattinger
Spunds good, but it why is it always assumed you have a blender ? Many people do not !
I don’t bother to put mint through the blender. The soup has already cooked down and I/we enjoy the texture of it as it is.
Needs meat, added chicken like traditional recipe has. Much better. It was like it was practicing to one day grow up and be mulligatawny. Chicken and some Kashmiri chilli and it was all grown up!
tasted pretty good, but I only had Madras curry powder. That is a lot more more spicy than regular curry powder. In hindsight you should use at most a half tablespoon. I used 2/3 tablespoon. I also added lemon to it which enhanced the flavor. I don’t think the apples are necessary, couldn’t really taste any hint of them? Maybe just adding more carrot would be better?
Thank you for your wonderful recipe! I am a very strict sodium diet (500mgs a day) so I can’t dine or order out, or even buy processed foods. This is such a wonderful and healthy soup and all I have to do is substitute sodium free stock in and it is wonderful! One warning is that sometimes we buy jalapeños and they are as hot as a bell pepper and once in a while it lights my lips on fire. So I often will use ground cayenne and add pinches until I get to my heat level. I usually save the jalapeños to be added raw to burritos/tacos/chili after I have tested their hotness. And maybe it is just our grocery store that has such variable heat in jalapeños.?. Again-thank you! I have made this probably a dozen times in the last year.
Hi Sherri,
I’m glad you love it and found a low sodium way to make it!
– Linda
I’ve made this twice now. It’s so good. We just happened to have a lime on hand. I’d strongly recommend a squeeze. It really makes the flavors shine.
Very nice recipe, good photographs.Thank you for sharing
Made the soup today and it was very tasty! Used a whole can of coconut milk and a 28 ounce can of tomatoes so I increased the amount of broth and lentils. I also used some whole spices – cumin, cardamom and coriander ground in my spice grinder for fresh flavour. I expect the soup will taste even better tomorrow when the flavours have time to blend together.
What kind of apples would you recommend for this? I can’t wait to try this recipe out!!
I usually use Pink Lady or Gala 🙂
Hello. Fantastic looking website and recipe! It looks so delicious. I want to make this recipe for Passover but that means I cant use lentils or other legumes/beans. Do you think the soup will still come out ok? Should I maybe replace the lentils with something else, or incorporate potatoes or something else instead?
Hmm, the lentils are what make the soup thick. You could try cooking sweet potatoes and adding the mash into it?
What a great recipe! I’ve been contemplating a replication of my favorite soup from our local Indian place. This is an awesome start. I added 2T of crushed fenugreek seeds and replaced tyme with fenugreek leaves and curry leaves, then a pinch of red Indian chile at the end. I also used coconut cream instead of coconut milk as it’s what I had in the pantry. The resultant soup was spot on after I added shredded roast chicken. You may never want to stop eating this. It’s definitely a requisite soulfood in my house.