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A soul-warming Moroccan sweet potato lentil soup recipe. This soup is made in the slow cooker and requires hardly any work at all. Plus, it makes the whole house smell warm and cozy!
SOUP TIME.
Which, in my very humble opinion is the best kind of time there is. Unless it’s Chocolate Chip Cookie time, which, goes without saying, is obviously better.
And which obviously this is NOT. Ahem, what? Where were we? Detoxing.
That’s right.
Today, I’m bringing you this Moroccan-style detox lentil soup loaded with all the goodness straight from your refrigerator plus pantry with tons of soul-warming spices to brighten up these cold, cold winter days.
Now that’s what I’m talking about.
This Moroccan-inspired sweet potato and lentil soup is WARMING. Warming in a very pleasant way. We aren’t talking spicy – I mean spiced. To perfection. Along with an abundance of vegetables, we’ve got ground coriander, cumin, curry powder, paprika, cinnamon, turmeric, and nutmeg in the mix. So there’s plenty of flavor that the lentils and sweet potatoes will soak up.
Did I mention it also happens to be freezer-friendly since we don’t have a noodle situation here. It’s also budget-friendly because lentils are a great way to pack in fiber and protein without breaking the bank.
And it just happens to be around 250 calories a serving. So the leftovers can go into portions in the freezer for meal prep when you need a quick lunch with tons of veggies.
Ingredients for Sweet Potato Lentil Soup
- Sweet Potatoes: we’ll use about 1 pound of sweet potatoes to the ¾-1 pound of lentils in this recipe. Peel and cube the potatoes into small pieces so that they cook up in roughly the same amount of time as the brown lentils.
- Carrots, Onions, and Celery: The trinity for a good bowl of soup! Feel free to use a store-bought mirepoix mix if you’d like as this recipe calls for equal parts of each.
- Red Bell Pepper: Adds natural sweetness to the pot of soup along with the ground cinnamon.
- Garlic: you’ll need a handful of cloves for this recipe. I opt to add fresh pressed garlic as it has a more potent flavor. Jar-lic works too but you’ll probably need a little over 2 tablespoons to give it that same taste.
- Lentils: You’ll need brown or green lentils for this recipe. I typically use red lentils for my Turkish Red Lentil Soup recipe or my Indian Style Red Lentil Dal Soup along with some coconut milk, but since we’re loading this into the slow cooker and letting it simmer away, the texture would become too mushy. With the longer cooking time, brown or green lentils work better for this particular recipe.
- Spices: You’ll need some ground coriander, cumin, curry powder, smoked paprika, ground cinnamon, ground turmeric, and nutmeg. Feel free to swap the paprika or chili powder, or add both if you want the smoke and the heat.
- Broth: feel free to use vegetable broth or chicken broth depending on whether you need this recipe to be vegan-friendly or not.
- Baby Spinach: I personally love baby spinach for this recipe, but feel free to swap it with kale if that’s what you like or if that’s what you have on hand.
- Lemons: Fresh lemon wedges really brighten up the soup. Finish he soup with the lemon or squeeze into individual bowls if you’d like.
I made this tonight and it turned out fantastic! I will definitely be putting this in my soup rotation.
Making Sweet Potato Soup
- Load it all up. Seriously, add everything but the baby spinach and lemon juice to the slow cooker. You can cook tis on high for 4-6 hours or low for 6-8 hours. Keep in mind that all slow cookers are different, so yours may take more or less time than what is listed. Check for doneness after the first 2-3 hours and then adjust as needed.
- Blend it up. Check to see if the soup is done my piercing the sweet potatoes with a sharp knife. The knife should go through easily without needing much force. Press the lentils down using a spoon to see if they mash easily. When done, transfer half of the soup mixture to a blend and pulse until smooth-ish. Stir this backing the soup pot and then add the baby spinach and lemon juice. Cover and let the soup hand out for 30 minutes or until the spinach wilts down.
- Adjust and serve. Taste and adjust the soup to your liking. You might need additional salt, black pepper, or more curry powder to your liking. You might also need another splash of broth depending on how much liquid the ingredient absorbed while cooking. Serve with whipped yogurt, fried bread, and fresh herbs on top. Enjoy!
Other vegetarian-friendly soup recipes
- Secret Ingredient Tomato Basil Soup
- Luxurious Turkish Lentil Soup
- Cheesy Rice and Black Bean Soup
- Roasted Honeynut Squash Soup
- Roasted Garlic Potato Soup
- Chipotle Butternut Squash Chili
Moroccan Sweet Potato Lentil Soup (Slow Cooker)
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 pound sweet potatoes peeled and cubed into small pieces
- 1 cup carrots chopped
- 1 cup onions chopped
- 1 cup celery chopped
- 1 red bell pepper diced
- 6 cloves garlic minced or pressed
- 1 ½ cups green or brown lentils rinsed and picked over
- 1 ½ teaspoon ground coriander
- 1 ½ teaspoon cumin powder
- 1 teaspoon curry powder or more to taste
- ½ teaspoon smoked paprika
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground turmeric
- ⅛ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 6-7 cups low sodium stock vegetable or chicken
- 2 ½ cups baby spinach roughly chopped
- ¼ cup lemon juice or lemon wedges for serving
Instructions
- Place the sweet potatoes, carrots, onions, celery, red bell pepper, garlic, lentils, spices, and 6 cups of broth into a slow cooker. Cover and cook on the low setting for 6-8 hours or on high for 4-6 hours.
- Check the lentils for doneness. If you're lentils have been in the pantry for a while, note that they'll take a bit longer to cook through.
- Place half the soup into a blender along with a little additional broth (½ cup or so) and blend till smoothish. Alternately, you can use an immersion blender directly in the slow cooker but be sure to not blend all of the soup if you want it to have a chunkier texture.
- Add the puree back into the slow cooker. Stir in the baby spinach and lemon juice. Cover the slow cooker, unplug it, and allow the ingredients to just hang out for 30 minutes or so until the spinach wilts down.
- Season with salt, pepper and curry powder to taste as desired. Thin with additional broth to desired consistency.
- Serve warm with whipped greek yogurt, fried pita bread, and tons of fresh herbs (parsley or cilantro) on top!
Notes
- Add more protein: You can sauté 1 pound of ground lamb, beef, chicken, or turkey and add it in with all the other ingredients to the slow cooker for a more protein-filled meal – note that you may need a little bit more of each of the seasonings to balance flavors when adding protein.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Like This? Leave a comment & rating below!
When looking at the photo is see something red that looks like a sliced red jalapeño. It can’t be the red bell pepper because it’s too small for that. I just wanted to find out what it was incase there was an error.
It’s just a red pepper used as a garnish for pictures!
Made this soup yesterday! The flavors were good, but I think I added too many lentils (I have a 4 quart crock pot- didnt think to reduce the lentil measurement haha) And I added waaaay to much lemon juice so it was really acidic. I will make it again. I’m sure if I get the ratios right it will taste waaay better
I’m super excited about this recipe and I’m getting ready to make it this week. I’m hoping to use some lentils I batch cooked and froze. I’m going to put them in near the end so they aren’t overcooked but any suggestions how much I should adjust the broth? Just enough to cover the veggies?
Hmm, I’d think you’d need about 4 1/2-5 1/2 cups of broth if you’re using cooked lentils but you may end up needing a little bit more or less depending on your preference of soup thickness. Hope you enjoy the soup!
OMG this was AMAZING!!!! We are traveling and didn’t have a slow cooker, so we did some of it our own way, BUT we used your recipe. And it was wonderful! Thanks so much for this healthy, light soup! Usually lentil soup is heavy!
LOVE this soup and happy I found the recipe. Thanks for sharing. What serving size is the nutritional information based on? A cup of the soup?
A few notes… 1) The hardest part is getting everything chopped but the food processor became my best friend after I was done chopping up the sweet potatoes and celery. Work smarter, not harder! 2) I sauteed ground chicken with the onion, garlic, and pepper. I added it to the Crockpot and flicked a little bay leaf in there too. 3) I added a chicken bouillon cube for an extra oomph instead of salting the soup.
After 8 hours of cooking, my lentils were still surprisingly hard so I had to let the whole thing cool down, stuck it in the fridge, and will finish it up on the stove when I get home from work tonight. However – I did taste it (duh) and it tasted so, so good. I used madras curry since that’s what I have from overseas and I loved the combo of all the spices. I am certain it’s going to be delish once the lentils are soft. I will be making another batch for my colleagues tomorrow evening and I plan to soak the lentils beforehand and maybe omit the bay leaf and use ground beef instead. A wonderful recipe, thanks for sharing!!!
Do you think this would work in the Pressure Cooker? If so, guesstamate on broth and time? Just long enough for lentils to cook? Would think this would be excellent as the PC holds flavor and nutrients!
Hi Lisa! I’d say anywhere from 15-20 minutes in the pressure cooker (depends on how long your lentils have been around). I’d start with just enough broth to cover the ingredients (that should be about 5-6 cups). If it ends up being a little thick, you can always adjust with a little more broth at the end.
Marzia, what size slow cooker do you use here?
I used my 7-quart crock pot for this recipe. 🙂
Any thoughts on how the flavor of the soup would be altered if Coriander was not added? I’m totally out of coriander and was wondering how crucial coriander was for getting the flavor right. Thanks!
Coriander does lend quite a bit of flavor to this recipe. If you’re out at the moment, I’d suggest doubling the curry powder or upping all the other spices by a little bit to make up for the flavor. Hope you enjoy the soup!
Marzia, it reads d e l i c i o u s. Question: Would it work as well without the slow cooker? We just moved into a new place and our slow cooker arrived broken.
I bet you could do this on the stove-top in a heavy bottom pot like a dutch oven. I’m unsure about the cooking times so you may need to play around with it a little.
I made the spicy shrimp pasta as well as this winter detox soup and my husband and I loved both! Thanks for posting the recipe. Will surely try more of your recipes.
Absolutely loved this recipe. Accidentally added chilli powder, about a teaspoon but I love chilli so no problem. I used tinned brown lentils as my store had sold out of dried and it worked out fine. Fantastic recipe for winter (Australian here). And perfect low cal if you are on the 5:2 diet. Thank you so much for the recipe, it’s a WINNER.
This soup looks delicious, did you use lentils from a tin?
I used dry, uncooked lentils for this recipe.
This was a really great soup, the whole family loved it.
Sending another review to correct my previous rating of your recipe to “5” stars. It seemed I missed half of a star. ? Please know that every time I make it, everyone loves it!
Your picture seems to have an oily sheen, did you add any oil? Looking forward to your reply.
Hi Jean! Yes, I added a drizzle of olive oil on top just to make it look a little more appetizing for pictures. Feel free to do the same if you’d like! Thank you so much for taking the time to comment 🙂
I absolutely love your recipe!!!!!! But instead of spinach I substituted with kale and it was perfect. Thank you for sharing your super delicious recipe!
I literally never comment on recipes but I made this Saturday for Sunday dinner with the family. It was very good. It was also flavorful and spiced well so I am not sure what Sierra Sue is referencing. We all finished it with a squeeze of lemon which really brightened up the flavors. I don’t have a crock pot so I cooked stovetop and only added the spinach on the reheat Sunday before serving. I also made a double batch to ensure leftovers. I’ve been making a different soup every Sunday and so far this was the favorite. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for taking the time to comment Hilary! I’m so glad to hear this ones been your favorite thus far 🙂
Hilary,
How long did you end up cooking it for on your stovetop?
I didn’t follow the recipe exactly, but moreso the idea + the spice blend. I subbed butternut squash instead of sweet potato, used 2 cups of lentils, and 1/2tsp salt. Used the curry powder mix from Trader Joe’s for reference. Also, I made this in my pressure cooker, so I sauteed the onion/garlic/carrots/celery/spices first, then threw in the rest of the ingredients, cooked for 4m manual. This soup is GREAT! I cannot currently stop eating it lol. Next time I might add some cayenne to make it a little spicy, but that’s just my taste. Definitely worth a try!
Is it possible to insert a “Print Recipe” button to make life easier?
The ‘print recipe’ button is located right below the picture on the recipe card.
I found this on Pinterest and made it yesterday – DELICIOUS! I have already shared it with a couple girlfriends. I am excited to check out more of your recipes.
And in case anyone is in the same situation…. I only had regular paprika (not smoked) and it still is great