Chicken Harira with Lentils, Tomato, and Spinach
A weeknight version of the Moroccan soup, with diced chicken breast, cooked lentils, crushed tomato, celery, and a great deal of cilantro, spiced with ginger, cinnamon, and turmeric and finished with spinach and lemon.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
Harira is the soup Moroccan families break the fast with during Ramadan, and the traditional pot is a long afternoon of dried chickpeas, lamb, and a flour and water thickener stirred in at the end. This is the weeknight shape of it. Cooked lentils out of a can, diced chicken breast, and crushed tomato get you to the same warm, sour, deeply spiced place in under half an hour, and the texture comes from the lentils breaking down slightly rather than from a thickener. It is not the version anyone's grandmother makes, and it is the version I actually make.
The spicing is what makes it recognizable, and it is gentler than people expect. Ginger and cinnamon lead, turmeric colors everything a deep gold before the tomato turns it red, and there is enough black pepper to give a slow heat at the back of the throat. Cumin and coriander sit underneath holding it together. None of it is sharp. What sharpens the bowl is the lemon and the enormous quantity of cilantro that goes in off the heat, and if you have ever thought a cup of herbs sounded excessive, this is the dish that will change your mind.
I make this when the weather turns or when somebody in the house is under the weather, and I make it in a wide pot so it reduces faster. It reheats better than almost anything else I cook, and it is one of the few dinners I am happy to eat three days running. Each bowl has a real amount of chicken and a good scoop of lentils in it, so it eats like a full dinner on its own. A wedge of lemon on the side is the only thing I put on the table with it.
Ingredients
- 1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into 1/2-inch dice
- 1 1/3 cups cooked brown or green lentils, drained (from a can or a pouch)
- 1 1/4 cups canned crushed tomatoes
- 2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
- 5 packed cups spinach leaves
- 3 celery stalks, diced small, plus any pale leaves
- 1 small onion, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp finely grated fresh ginger
- 1 3/4 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
- 3/4 tsp ground turmeric
- 1/2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
- 1 1/4 tbsp olive oil
- 1 packed cup cilantro leaves and tender stems, chopped
- 1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley, chopped
- 2 tbsp lemon juice, plus wedges for the table
- a scant 1/4 tsp fine sea salt
Instructions
- Bloom the spices: Heat the olive oil in a wide pot or a deep skillet over medium. Add the onion and celery and cook for three minutes until they soften, then add the ginger, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, turmeric, black pepper, and salt. Stir constantly for forty five seconds, until the spices darken slightly and smell toasted rather than dusty. This step is short and it is the one that sets the flavor of the whole pot.
- Brown the chicken lightly: Add the diced chicken and stir for two minutes, just until the outside turns from pink to pale and the pieces have picked up the spice from the pan. It does not need to brown deeply here, since it will finish in the liquid.
- Build the broth: Pour in the crushed tomatoes and cook for two minutes, stirring, until the tomato darkens and pulls away from the sides of the pot. Add the broth, bring it to a simmer, and let it bubble steadily for six minutes so the tomato loses its tinny edge and the broth reduces a little.
- Add the lentils: Stir in the lentils and simmer for four minutes more. Press a few of them against the side of the pot with the back of the spoon as it cooks, which is what thickens the broth and gives it body. It should coat a spoon lightly rather than run off it like water.
- Finish with greens, herbs, and lemon: Add the spinach a handful at a time and stir, and it will collapse within a minute. Take the pot off the heat and add the lemon juice, the cilantro, and the parsley, folding them through so the herbs stay green. Taste, add another squeeze of lemon if it needs waking up, and ladle into deep bowls.
Variations
- Chickpeas and lentils: Use half lentils and half chickpeas, which is closer to the traditional pot and gives the bowl two textures.
- Harissa swirl: Stir a teaspoon of harissa into each bowl at the table for heat that stays separate from the warm spice underneath.
- Kale in place of spinach: Add torn kale with the lentils rather than at the end, since it wants four minutes rather than one.
- Egg finish: Beat an egg with lemon juice and stream it into the pot off the boil for a silkier, more traditional body.
Storage & Leftovers
This keeps five days in the refrigerator and improves for the first two. The lentils continue to soften and thicken the broth, so expect a stew by day three rather than a soup. Store the extra cilantro separately if you have it and add a fresh handful to each reheated bowl, which brings back most of what the first day had.
Reheat it gently on the stove with a splash of water or broth to loosen it, four or five minutes over medium. A hard boil breaks the lentils down further and dulls the spinach, so keep it just under a simmer. The microwave is fine for a single bowl at two minutes, stirred halfway through.
It freezes for three months and is a good candidate for it, since there is nothing in the pot with a delicate texture to lose. Freeze it in single portions, thaw overnight in the refrigerator, and reheat with extra lemon and fresh herbs, both of which fade in the freezer even when everything else survives.
Notes & Tips
- Give the spices their forty five seconds: Spices stirred into liquid taste dusty. Spices toasted in oil first taste like a different ingredient, and that is the entire difference between a flat pot and a good one.
- Cook the tomato paste-dry: Two minutes of the crushed tomato bubbling on its own before the broth goes in removes the metallic taste that canned tomato carries.
- Crush a few lentils: Pressing a spoonful against the side of the pot thickens the broth without any flour. It is what gives harira its particular clinging body.
- Use more cilantro than feels sensible: A whole packed cup, stems included, added off the heat. Half that amount disappears entirely, and the herbs are as much a part of this soup as the lentils are.
Nutrition & Mindful Eating
- Chicken, lentils, and tomato are the three things holding this pot together. The diced breast carries the protein, the lentils bring fiber and the starch that thickens the broth, and the tomato gives the acidity and the color that make it read as harira.
- Lentils cook down just enough to blur into the liquid, which is where the body of the soup comes from, and they carry both fiber and iron in a form that the lemon squeezed in at the end helps your body take up.
- Spinach folded in during the last minute keeps its color and its bite, and dark leaves added that late hold on to more of their folate and vitamin C than greens that simmer for twenty minutes.
- Ginger, cinnamon, and turmeric are the smell of this pot, all three toasted in oil before any liquid goes near them. Turmeric and ginger have both been studied for their anti-inflammatory compounds, and here they are also doing the plain work of making tomato and lentils taste like somewhere specific.
- A bowl of this holds you for a long stretch, and the combination of protein from the chicken and fiber from the lentils is most of the reason. It is the kind of dinner that eats slowly because it is hot, which tends to be its own kind of useful.
- As you eat, notice how the cinnamon and ginger sit underneath the tomato rather than on top of it, and let the heat of the bowl set your pace rather than finishing it faster than it wants to be eaten.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this authentic harira?
It is a fast home version rather than the traditional pot. Real harira usually starts with dried chickpeas, uses lamb or beef, includes vermicelli or rice, and is thickened at the end with tedouira, a flour and water slurry. What carries over here is the spice profile, the tomato and legume base, and the lemon and cilantro finish, which is most of what makes it taste like harira.
Can I use dried lentils?
You can, but it takes the recipe past thirty minutes. Brown or green lentils need about twenty five minutes of simmering on their own. If you go that way, add 3/4 cup of dried lentils with the broth, cook them until tender, and add the chicken only in the last six minutes so it does not overcook.
Can I make it with chicken thighs?
Yes, and the broth will be a little richer for it. Dice boneless thighs the same size and give them an extra two minutes in the simmering liquid. Chickpeas in place of half the lentils is also traditional and works well with either cut.
It tastes flat. What is missing?
Almost always acid. Harira is meant to be sour, and a bowl without enough lemon tastes muddy no matter how well you spiced it. Add another tablespoon of juice, taste again, and only then reach for salt. A little more black pepper is the second thing to try.