Alison Roman’s Buttered Tomato Soup With Lentils And Fennel
121
- Prep Time10 min
- Total Time1 h 10 min
- Makes4 Servings
Imagine, for a moment, a tomato soup that needs no blender to produce an impossibly creamy result, all without a drop of dairy; a lentil soup vibrant and gorgeous enough to grace the cover of a cookbook yet humble enough to eat alone at your kitchen counter for a Tuesday lunch. Seasonally agnostic (canned tomatoes here!), this soup thrives in winter with the best of your pantry staples. Once this soup comes together, you may forget there are lentils in here at all. They magically melt into the pot, nearly disappearing (that’s the idea), giving you creamy texture and luscious body: tomato (and lentil) soup utopia.
Ingredients
2 tbsp unsalted butter (or more olive oil)
2 tbsp olive oil, plus more
4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 large fennel bulb, thinly sliced
1 medium yellow or red onion or 2 large shallots, thinly sliced
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp fennel seeds
½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, plus more
¾ cup red lentils
1 (28-ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes, crushed by hand
6 cups water, vegetable broth, or chicken broth
Sour cream, full-fat yogurt, or Parmesan cheese if you like
Instructions
Heat the butter and 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the garlic, fennel, and onion. Season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until the fennel and onions are completely softened and start to caramelize a bit, 12 to 15 min. (This builds a lot of flavour for your soup—don’t rush it.)
Add the fennel seeds and red pepper flakes, stirring to encourage contact with the pot so the spices have a chance to toast for a minute or two. Add the lentils, crushed tomatoes and 6 cups of liquid of your choosing. (I make mine with water, and it’s perfect, but if you have some broth to use or want to add some Better Than Bouillon to your water, go for it.)
Season everything with salt and pepper and bring to a strong simmer. Reduce the heat to medium-low and continue to cook until the lentils have nearly disappeared into the pot, 45–50 minutes. Stir every now and then (especially toward the end of cooking) to encourage the lentils and tomatoes to break down and into one another. If the soup doesn’t feel quite thick enough or the lentils are somehow still not near-mush, increase the heat slightly and continue to cook until it happens. It will happen!
To serve, give the soup one more season with salt and pepper. Ladle the soup into bowls and finish with more olive oil, pepper, and red pepper flakes. I am continually shocked at how good this soup is with nothing else (no squeeze of lemon, no fresh herb in sight!), but I do like to spoon a little dollop of sour cream or yogurt into the bottom of my bowl and top it with the soup. What a treat that is, a little buried puddle of melting sour cream at the bottom of your bowl. A true gift!
Find more delicious recipes from Alison Roman’s Something From Nothing, plus a decadent holiday feast from Nothing Fancy.
Something from Nothing copyright © 2025 by Alison Roman. Photographs copyright © 2025 by Chris Bernabeo. Published by Clarkson Potter, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Excerpted with permission from the publisher.
Alison Roman is a New York–based cook, writer and author of the New York Times bestselling cookbooks Nothing Fancy, Dining In, Sweet Enough and Something From Nothing. She writes the newsletter titled A Newsletter, hosts the cooking show Home Movies on YouTube and runs First Bloom, a corner store in Bloomville, New York,
