Lentil Soup with Pulled Pork

Lentil Soup with Pulled Pork - use already seasoned cooked pork to add flavor to a simple lentil soup. Great way to make a week of lunches from leftovers!

I’ve noticed that I have a bad tendency to give a basic recipe – such as Lentil Soup or Pulled Pork – and then airily wave a hand and say “And you can of course vary this in many ways!” Which is remarkably Not Helpful for someone who has not cooked much, or has not cooked without Tried and True Recipes, or is, for one reason or another, changing the way they cook, or is just not familiar with that particular food or its variations. I need to firmly remind myself of my own cooking failures when I was 20 (no, you can’t just make single serving variations of stew by boiling it for 10 minutes instead of simmering for an hour…) and my own search for a Meatloaf Recipe much more recently. (I’d never made it. I wanted to try. But the recipes were so different I didn’t know where to begin!)

Where to begin. That’s the key.

Lentil Soup with Pulled Pork - use already seasoned cooked pork to add flavor to a simple lentil soup. Great way to make a week of lunches from leftovers!

A staple in my kitchen is a slow cooked pork shoulder. You can cook this in a slow oven, but for us, simmering in a slow cooker has made more sense. I often cook it plain and unseasoned, to put it in a variety of recipes, but other times I season it, and then feature that flavor. Unseasoned I usually refer to it just as shredded pork, since, from what I see, the phrase Pulled Pork often refers to shredded pork further simmered in a sauce, with that flavoring.

I recently made a wonderful Chipotle Pulled Pork, which I did simmer in sauce, and I have some still in my freezer. Now, the great thing about flavoring it up front is that I don’t have to do anything else to it – it’s completely ready to heat and eat, and we all need meals like that. But sometimes…

Lentil Soup with Pulled Pork - use already seasoned cooked pork to add flavor to a simple lentil soup. Great way to make a week of lunches from leftovers!

Another staple is lentil soup. I make that all the time, it’s a wonderful easy lunch, and I try to regularly vary it to keep it interesting. And obviously one way to do that is to use the seasoned meat from the freezer!

So… I cooked lentil soup with Chipotle Pulled Pork, but you could use the more simply seasoned Slow Cooked Pork, or your own favorite recipe for pulled pork. You can also use unseasoned pork, and it will still be good but a little bland – in that case you might want to add some seasoning to the soup. (You can also totally do this with cooked and seasoned chicken, or leftover beef pot roast or Swiss Steak, if that’s what you have – especially if you don’t eat pork!)

I started with my usual base, the classic mirepoix – chopped an onion, a carrot, and a rib of celery – but you can use sofrito, the Cajun Holy Trinity, or whatever aromatic base suits your taste and your pork. Saute them in oil in the soup pot. Rinse and pick over two cups of lentils, and stir them in. To this add four ounces of seasoned Pulled Pork (I used the Chipotle Pulled Pork) carefully chopped into spoon sized pieces. The long shreds that simmered pork naturally falls into – typical of pulled pork – are a nuisance in a soup bowl. (Unless, of course, you eat your soup with chopsticks, which would traditionally be another recipe entirely…)

Lentil Soup with Pulled Pork - use already seasoned cooked pork to add flavor to a simple lentil soup. Great way to make a week of lunches from leftovers!

Stir all the ingredients together, to mix them, then add two quarts of water. Bring to a boil, and then simmer for forty five minutes, until the lentils are cooked. Then add a quart of liquid – broth, perhaps, or more water. (I added water with Better than Bouillon Ham base. Sometimes I have pork bone broth, I’d use it if I did. Or chicken broth, whatever…) Taste for seasoning – you are likely to need a little salt, and, depending on the seasoning of your pork and what liquid you just added, you may or may not want a little something else… herbs, hot peppers, a little tomato paste, more chipotle or sofrito or a bit of barbecue sauce…

Simmer another ten to fifteen minutes to blend the flavors, and let the lentils soften further, then serve.

Confession – I had planned to add some chopped cooked greens for that last stage. I made the soup, took all the pictures, sat down to eat it, noticed halfway through that I’d forgotten the spinach…  Well, it was good without it. It would be good with it, too. This is a great place to add frozen chopped spinach, or chopped green muffins, or chopped fresh escarole or chard or… even cabbage. Whatever soup greens you have on hand. Go for it!

And there you have it. A nice big pot of soup that took only a few minutes of your time, though it simmered away while you read the Sunday paper (Does anyone still read all the extra stories, sections, and analysis on Sunday morning, or even Saturday, or am I showing my age, here?) Lunch for the week. Very little work, attention, or thought, really, since you already seasoned the pork the way you like it…

Lentil Soup with Pulled Pork - use already seasoned cooked pork to add flavor to a simple lentil soup. Great way to make a week of lunches from leftovers!

Lentil Soup with Pulled Pork

Anne Murphy
Lentil Soup with Pulled Pork - use already seasoned cooked pork to add flavor to a simple lentil soup. Great way to make a week of lunches from leftovers!
5 from 1 vote
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour
Total Time 1 hour 10 minutes
Course Soup

Ingredients
  

  • oil for pan
  • 1 onion
  • 1 carrot
  • 1 rib celery
  • 2 c lentils
  • 4 oz cooked seasoned pulled pork
  • 2 qt water
  • 1 qt broth
  • salt seasoning to taste

Instructions
 

  • Heat oil in a soup pot. Chop onion, carrot, and celery, and add to pot, saute until softened.
  • Add lentils to pot and stir. Chop pork into bite sized shreds, add to pot and stir.
  • Add water, and cook 45 minutes, until lentils soften.
  • Add broth (or more water) and adjust seasoning to taste. Simmer another 10 to 15 minutes to blend flavors and further soften the lentils.

Lentil Soup with Pulled Pork - use already seasoned cooked pork to add flavor to a simple lentil soup. Great way to make a week of lunches from leftovers!

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18 thoughts on “Lentil Soup with Pulled Pork”

  • There are times when I too feel like posting a recipe that doesn’t state the exact quantity. Just gauge and go according to your preference is what I’d like to say!!! :p But yeah, I too realize that when looking at new ingredients or dishes, it’s difficult to gauge just because I’m unfamiliar with what it’s supposed to taste. Ok, ramblings aside, love that you added pulled pork into the soup. Yum!

    • It can be tricky. We like more hot pepper, for instance, than many people, so I try to give a sort of minimal amount and say “Or to taste” (and then Rich tells me it’s bland… LOL) SO, OK, seasoning we know…

      But maybe you don’t have four ounces of pork left. Can you use just three? Sure. Can you go ahead and use five, instead of carefully keeping that smidge? Sure! But… you have to already know how to cook to know which recipes you can do this to… and that’s the trick. (Don’t be so casual about a souffle!)

      So I’m trying to give someone starting to cook (or to cook these foods) enough help to begin, while helping them understand what variations they can make – and I’m probably confusing everyone 😉 – but…

      And thanks!

    • For this recipe, I would probably use seasoned dark meat chicken. The seasoning is what I’m trying to get – so chicken simmered in your favorite sauce or seasoning.

      Beef would work, too, and lamb or mutton (again, simmered in seasoning until tender) would probably be wonderful. Lamb is ridiculously expensive around here, so I almost never cook it. Too bad, I do like it, but I really can’t afford it.

      And I’m sorry, but I’m cooking more pork than I’ve ever eaten before in my life, because right now for some reason it is readily and inexpensively available. And I have too many readers (including a few close friends) who therefore can’t eat some of my recipes! I’m trying to work around that…

  • I too am so guilty of expanding too much on a recipe without first providing guidelines. Thank you so much for giving a complete recipe with all the details. Looks like a great thing to have in your fridge for a long wintery weekend.

    • Isn’t it easy to do? But I have to judge my audience – and while many are highly experienced cooks, many are not. And in many ways, the less experienced ones are the ones I’m writing for.

      It was such a good soup in that nasty cold weather we’ve had lately… Easy, and warming. Thanks!

    • Well, enjoy it!

      For me, half the reason for cooking that much meat at once (when there are only two of us) is that I then have meat I can put in other recipes – and this is really a great combination. And it is so easy to just have everything on hand…

  • Strictly speaking, “pulled” pork is specifically meat that has been pulled apart using your fingers as soon as it’s cool enough to handle, as opposed to “shredded” using forks, or “chopped” with a knife. (And I won’t even bother starting the religious war of which barbecue sauce is “correct” for pulled pork! 😉

    • That’s the reason I had not used that term before, but always carefully said “Shredded” pork. But I’ve seen enough use of the term to mean “tender cooked pork in a spicy tomato sauce” that I gave up and went with it here – but I’m happy to have clarification in the comments!

      Normally I do just use it in shreds – but in the soup you probably really want to chop it, just to make it manageable…

      In the original post I touch on the differences of opinion about the Right Way to cook the meat. My usual disclaimer – Authentic 21st Century New York cooking here… (I have friends in North Carolina. I’m not going *near* the barbecue debate!)

      It’s a good recipe – and certainly not what you’d get in the South.

    • In this case, as I mentioned, I used water to start the lentils cooking, then more water with some ham base.

      When I cook a pork shoulder like this, I usually go ahead and then make stock – bone broth – from the bones and scrap, and then use it for later soup and cooking. If I’d had that handy I’d have used it. Otherwise, really, I’d have used chicken broth, or vegetable – or even water. The other ingredients in this recipe have enough flavor that it’s still pretty good without broth!

      I would not use beef or mushroom, because they can be dominant, but others work well.

  • What kind of lentils did you use? I have green and red on hand I have a ton of leftover pulled pork from Tuesday supper so this will be great to use it up

    • You want green lentils for this – either them or or brown, whichever you have. Red lentils are sold split. They cook much more quickly and have a more delicate flavor, and do not substitute well for the others.

      Enjoy it!

  • 5 stars
    I used sliced Kielbasa instead of pork. Also spiced it with ground garlic sea salt, ground pepper and lots of cumin! My family loved it.

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