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Chef critique

Golden Squash, Lentil & Rainbow Chard Soup

This is a cohesive and warming weeknight soup, but it requires more liquid to reach a proper consistency and more salt to properly season the vegetables and broth.

Score: 7/10

Suggested fixes

  • Increase the water in step 6 to 4 or 4 1/2 cups for a better soup consistency.
  • Increase the total Morton kosher salt to 3 to 3 1/2 teaspoons to season the added liquid, putting the bulk of it in step 6 and reserving 1/4 teaspoon for step 8.
  • Format the additions of garlic and spices in step 5, and the squash, lentils, salt, and water in step 6, as bulleted lists separated from the surrounding prose by blank lines.

Issues

  • medium / cookability: Using only 3 cups of water for 3/4 cup of red lentils, 1 lb of squash, and 8 oz of chard will yield a very thick, stodgy stew that is prone to scorching during the 20-minute simmer, rather than a soup.
  • medium / flavor: The recipe uses 1 3/4 teaspoons of Morton kosher salt (about 10.5g) for roughly 1.7kg of total ingredients. This yields a salinity of about 0.6%, which is noticeably underseasoned compared to the 1% starting point for vegetables, grains, and their cooking liquids.
  • low / clarity: Steps 5 and 6 each introduce four ingredients into the pot at once, but they are written in prose rather than using bulleted lists.

Strengths

  • Excellent separation of preparatory tasks from active cooking steps.
  • Correctly refers back to prepped ingredients concisely in later steps without restating amounts.
  • Effectively stages the cooking times of the squash, lentils, chard stems, and chard leaves to ensure ideal textures.