Lentil burger soup

My husband has been loving lentils in the Instant Pot as a side dish. So now that it’s getting colder and soup season is upon us, he wanted me to find a good lentil soup recipe. I found a great one from CookieandKate. I loved all the ingredients but of course, like I always do, I adjusted the recipe a bit.

First of all, my family always needs some meat to their meal so I knew I needed to add one pound of ground elk to the recipe. You can substitute some grass fed burger if you’d like.

Great fall soup recipe

So I started browning the burger on the stovetop in a skillet while I made the rest of the soup in my InstantPot. I started with the oil, carrots, and onions as she directed but on saute in the  InstantPot.

Then I added the garlic, cumin and basil (being that I didn’t have curry powder or thyme) I added the diced tomatoes and lentils. Since I was making a batch of beef bone broth in my crock pot and I added the ground elk burger, I used 4 cups of beef bone broth instead of vegetable broth. I added the ground elk next, but next time I will wait to add it towards the end.After adding the water, I switched my InstantPot over to slow cook for a few hours. After this amount of time, the lentils were still a little hard so I set my InstantPot to the soup (pressure) setting for 30 mins. When this was finished, I did a quick release and used my immersion blender to blend the soup a little bit. Next time I will wait to add the burger until after I blend the soup for a chunkier soup/chili.

CookieandKate says to chop up 1 cup of kale and cook a few more minutes but I was so anxious to get this on the table I forgot this step as well as her recommendation to add 1 to 2 Tblsp. Of lemon juice. I just added salt and pepper to taste and then served.

My family loved it! They thought it tasted like chili on the cold fall night we had. The next day I poured the leftover soup into my SouperCubes so we could have this soup in the freezer for lunch or another easy dinner.