Leftover cooked green lentils — tomorrow’s soup

After Sunday the soup pot is still a little thin — and in the fridge a bowl of green lentils from lunch, already cool. Easy to reheat them alone “as a side”. I lift the soup lid, tip the lentils in, and give one quiet boil — the stock catches on the grains, the soup is eaten with a spoon again.

Leftover cooked green lentils — tomorrow’s soup. Lentils into a salad are about a cold bowl with cucumber; chickpeas mashed into a paste are about crushing; pearl barley in stew is another grain. Here it is green lentils into soup already made: a patch of body, not a new salad and not the same side again.

A handful or two is enough. If the bowl is large — I keep the rest cold briefly, sour goes to the bin. I don’t mix flour for thickness when the grains are already in the soup. I check salt only after the boil with the lentils.

I don’t need a cold bowl “to finish the side”. I need soup that is thick and honest again. In your kitchen are green lentils stirred into the soup — or left orphaned in the bowl?