Dinner: Persian New Year Noodle Soup (2024)

Ash Reshteh (Persian New Year Noodle Soup): The Details

Traditionally, this is a preparation associated with Persian New Year (Nowruz) but there is a long list of reasons I like to make it more often. In Persian culture, the new year is an opportune time to wrangle the “threads” in your life, and to set intentions and direction for the year ahead. That’s where the noodles come into play here. At its core this is a fortifying, nutrient-dense bean and noodle soup featuring thin egg noodles swimming in a fragrant broth spiced with turmeric, cumin, fresh chile, and black pepper. You use a medley of lentils, chickpeas, and cranberry beans to create a soup that is hearty and filling without being heavy. You add spinach, dill, and cilantro. You add lime juice for a bit of sour at the end. And then you prepare a number of toppings to add when you serve the soup – chopped walnuts, deeply caramelized onions, and sour cream (kashk). It’s a formidable ingredient list, but results in hearty bowls of, arguably, one of the world’s great soups.

The Ingredients:

A few notes related to shopping for ingredients.

• Beans & Lentils: There are three types in this soup: borlotti (or cranberry beans), chickpeas, and lentils. They all have different cooking times which can be a bit of a pain. If I don’t have any beans pre-cooked in my freezer, I cook the cranberry beans from scratch, use canned chickpeas, and cook the lentils with the soup broth because they’re relatively quick to cook. I’m definitely a hard pass on canned lentils.
• Stock/Broth: For this recipe I like to use water plus 2 tablespoons of this homemade bouillon powder to make my broth. Or you could do it with whatever bouillon you keep on hand. In general, stay clear of carton vegetable broths that have a lot of tomato or assertive vegetable flavors. You’re probably better off with water and can make adjustments from there if needed.
• Noodles: I’ve played around with a range of noodles here over the years. I love to use thin-ish egg noodles, but the Persian grocer near me only stocks a generic sampling of spaghetti and vermicelli, so that’s where we landed the last time around. Andy Baraghani uses linguine in his wonderful version.