Chicken and Lentil Soup with Jammy Onions

As most Sundays go, today was a good one. I woke up slightly less exhausted than I’ve been feeling for the past week and peeked out behind the curtains to see the slightest bit of sun– an aspect of Denmark I still haven’t become accustomed to. Though most of my day was spent completing assignments and sipping a chai latte, I decided tonight was the night for a filling and hearty soup. Enter the BA test kitchen and Andy Baraghani’s Chicken and Lentil Soup.

Let me start out by saying that cooking in my dorm room has proven to be a high risk situation. I seldom get through cooking without knocking into the stack of dishes sitting on the drying rack directly next to the stove or moving half the contents out of the fridge to find one item because the light inside doesn’t work. Oh, and one out of four burners (a big one) doesn’t work either. The counter space is so limited that I use my desk, which also functions as my makeup area, as the designated chopping station. But enough with the pity party, I’m making it work.

Use a sharp knife (or relatively if you’re me) to thinly slice two onions and just about a million cloves of garlic to get the recipe going. Once the oil gets hot, in goes the onions and later the garlic, followed by lentils, turmeric, chicken thighs and water. After everyone joins the party, the soup simmers for what feels like a cruel amount of time if you haven’t eaten a real meal all day (read 20-25 minutes). When the chicken is cooked through and the lentils are tender, the chicken is removed from the pot and shredded before being reunited with the rest of the warm goodness. A few squeezes of lemon, a huge bunch of parsley and those jammy onions and crispy garlic finish the soup on the highest of notes. I also made a pot of basmati rice for some extra comfort, which I thought was the perfect vehicle for the fragrant broth.

Yes, this recipe is relatively uncomplicated, but I finished cooking feeling like I had run a marathon. Tiny kitchens and makeshift equipment definitely made this one a bit harder to make, but the reward was how damn good it tasted. The recipe reminded me of home, something I’ve definitely been missing a bit since leaving the states. Maybe it was simply the act of cooking with a recipe, something I haven’t done since arriving here, or maybe it was knowing my parents would love eating this too, but this meal made me feel whole. In fact, I felt so whole by the end of dinner I had to lie on the floor in exhaustion (and satisfaction). So here’s to recipes so steaming and flavorful, that stick to your bones in the best way possible, even when they are made in dorm rooms.