Spicy Lentils with Sausage
on Jan 17, 2012, Updated Jul 25, 2024
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This Spicy Lentils with Sausage dish is not your average lentil recipe—it’s flavorful, hearty, and so simple to make that you’ll love it for an easy weeknight meal!
Lentils. What does that word bring to mind? Your grandma? Strange mushy soup? Food storage? I’m not sure, either. I don’t know tons about lentils, but I want to know them and love them. I have prepared them a handful of times and always liked the results. This recipe really won me over, though.
The heat in this recipe comes from diced tomatoes with green chilies in them. The can indicated that the chilies were “medium” in heat. When mixed with everything, it came out with a nice little punch but nothing too hot. My kids even ate what they were given. I’ve also found a couple of other dishes to use the lentils in like this Healthy Lentil Chili and these Quick and Easy Lentil Tacos. Delicious!
Table of Contents
Why You’ll Love Spicy Lentils with Sausage
- Lentils are great for heart health, and they provide you with protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. For how not really attractive they are, they sure taste good and do good for your health!
- This soup can be made in big batches and frozen for up to 3 months. It also lasts great in the fridge for up to 5 days!
- Lentils contain even more iron than meat, in addition to other vitamins and minerals. Plus, they are fast to cook, easy to store, and easy to make!
Recipe Ingredients
- Olive oil
- Kielbasa sausage
- Onion
- Garlic cloves
- Seasonings – Chili powder, thyme, paprika, salt.
- Tomatoes with green chilies – canned
- Bullion base – I use Better Than Bullion Organic Soup Base
- Lentils
See the recipe card below for full information on ingredients and quantities.
How to Make Spicy Lentils with Sausage
Step 1: Cook the onion and seasonings in oil and stir in tomatoes.
Step 2: Add the water, bouillon, and lentils. Bring the mixture to a boil.
Step 3: Nestle the kielbasa into the lentils and continue to cook
Step 4: Continue to cook on low, then serve and enjoy!
Recipe FAQs
Lentils are part of the legume family. They are third in the family when it comes to the amount of protein they have (falling behind soybeans and hemp, but who eats hemp?), and they have lots of dietary fiber. Another nice thing about lentils is they are shelf-stable. You can buy a bag to try the recipe and then put it in the cupboard until you want to make it again.
Look for a bag labeled “lentils” in the grocery store. They should be brownish to dark green.
All lentils are good for you, but brown and green lentils still have their hulls and work best in soups and sturdier dishes (like this one or as a base in veggie burgers). Red and yellow lentils cook faster because they’re often split, so they’re better for purees.
Expert Tips
- If you don’t want the heat, just use normal diced tomatoes. If you would like it hotter then look for diced tomatoes with chilies that indicate “hot” on the can!
- Lentil Soup can be easily kept for 5 days in the fridge, making it ideal for cooking on the weekend and serving throughout the week.
- To prevent the lentils from getting mushy, bring them to a rapid simmer and then reduce the heat to low for the rest of the cooking time.
- Lentils can be used in many different recipes and store so well. Try them in this Instant Pot Ground Turkey and Lentil Taco Filling. Its quick, easy
More Soup Recipes to Consider
Soups, Stews & Chowders
White Chicken Chili
Soups, Stews & Chowders
Slow Cooker Veggie Beef Soup
15-Minute Recipes
Cornbread Waffles with Chili – 15 Minute Dinner Idea
Soups, Stews & Chowders
Texas Chili Recipe
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Spicy Lentils with Sausage
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 pound kielbasa sausage, cut into 8 equal pieces and split down the middle
- 1 onion, minced
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- 1/2 teaspoon thyme
- 1/2 teaspoon paprika
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 can diced tomatoes with green chilies, medium heat
- 3 cups water
- 2 teaspoons Better Than Bullion Organic Soup Base, (or bullion of your choice, or use just 1.5 cups water with 1.5 cups of broth)
- 1 cup lentils, rinsed
- Salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Heat the oil in a large skillet on medium-high heat until shimmering. Carefully add the sausage, cut side down, and cook until browned. This should take 2 to 5 minutes.
- Transfer the sausage to a plate and leave the fat in the pan. Over medium-high heat, cook the onion in the fat until soft, about 5 minutes.
- Add the garlic, chili powder, thyme, and paprika and cook until fragrant, about 15 seconds.
- Stir in the tomatoes, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan.
- Add the water, bouillon, and lentils. Bring the mixture to a boil.
- Cover and reduce the heat to low and cook until the lentils are tender but have a little crunch to them, around 35 minutes.
- Nestle the kielbasa into the lentils and continue to cook, covered, over low heat until the lentils are completely tender, about 10 minutes.
- Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Notes
- There are lots of types of lentils, and you want brown or dark green ones. Red or yellow lentils cook to mush and are used in things like curry and other sauces. We don’t want mush here, so don’t get red or yellow lentils.
- The sausage here is important. You are going to brown the sausage in the pan, use the drippings to cook the onion, and then cook everything else in that same pan. When the sausage and onion are cooking, the bottom of the pan will start to get all brown and crusty with meaty and oniony treasure. When you add the liquid, all that brown stuff on the bottom of the pan comes up and into the rest of your dish. This is what “deglazing” is if you’ve heard that on a cooking show. That caramelized layer on the bottom of the pan makes the result flavor amazing. You can’t skip the sausage. Don’t even try.
- They don’t need to be soaked like dried beans and have a short cooking time. They are also cheap. Are you convinced to go get a bag yet?
- Pound for pound, raw lentils have more protein than steak. While not as protein-dense once cooked, they pack even more iron than meat, in addition to other vitamins and minerals.
so, I’ve never bought sausage before & have a hard time buying ‘new’ things. any tips? maybe pictures of what the packages look like & what recipes you use them in?
Great question Marseille! The kielbasa that I bought for this recipe was a Hill Shire Farms brand keilbasa. It is in the refrigerated meat section near the bacon and hot dogs. It is a link style sausage that comes in 1 pound packages and is shaped a bit like a horseshoe. A great substitute for Keilbasa would be a smoked sausage that would be right next to it. The Keilbasa is a little more flavorful to me and a little spicy. My mother doesn’t like it, I love it, you can choose.
When looking at this link style sausage it is good to read the package and see if it is fully cooked or not and if it is in a casing or not. The casing is an outer layer used to hold the sausage together. If it is included then it needs to be removed before eating (it would be like eating waxed paper). Most do not need a casing removed and are fully cooked… just things to be aware of!
Does that help? Any thoughts from anyone else?
And one more thought… don’t buy the store brand! Thomas bought the Walmart brand of smoked sausage for my Birthday breakfast and it was not good! I am a store brand lover on 90% of things, this is not one of those things. It’s worth the extra dollar to get a better brand!
I love lentils also, it’s a new love and I think they are u der utilized. Thanks for you blogs I love them both.