Before I get into Paul McCartney’s Really Ripping Lentil Soup, I just want to take a moment to discuss how weird Paul and Linda McCartney look on The Simpsons. Why did the animators decide to give them those bizarre colored eyes, as opposed to every other character who gets the standard black dot? I can’t be alone in thinking that the look is unsettling.
I’m not sure what wizardry is involved in playing “Maybe I’m Amazed” backwards, so thanks people even nerdier than I am for taking the time to figure out what Paul McCartney was saying on this song! It was easy to find the Really Ripping Lentil Soup recipe online. In fact, many sites list both the recipe and Paul’s additional “oh and by the way, I’m alive” sentence, which is a callback to the whole Paul is dead rumors from 1966.
Ingredients
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 2 tbsp. vegetable oil
- 1 clove garlic, crushed
- 1 cup carrots, chopped
- 2 sticks of celery, chopped
- 1/2 cup lentils
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 tbsp. freshly chopped parsley
- Salt & freshly ground pepper to taste
- 2 1/4 cup vegetable stock or water
Directions
Note: While Sir Paul lists the ingredients for his lentil soup, he didn’t include any instructions – so these are my own.
Heat a large sauce pan with vegetable oil. Add garlic and onions with a dash of water, heat until translucent. Next, add celery and carrots and heat for another 5 minutes until soft, adding salt and pepper to taste. Add vegetable stock until ingredients are mixed; next add lentils and bay leaf. Bring soup to a boil, then immediately reduce heat, cover pan and let simmer for approximately 20 minutes. Remove bay leaf and add additional salt and pepper. Finally add parsley before serving.
I was a little skeptical about this recipe since it includes a whole onion, which is more onion than I usually like…but this soup was actually ripping! Since I used vegetable stock, this recipe is technically vegan and not just vegetarian. As someone who enjoys a breakfast that involves a bacon man that lives in a bacon house, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this. Rock stars. Is there anything they don’t know?
Cromulence: 9 Independent Thought Alarms out of 10
Paul McCartney’s Really Ripping Lentil Soup Recipe From: Lisa the Vegetarian (The Simpsons Season 7 – Episode 5)
if paul was still alive i bet he would love that people are making this!!
So many vegetarian soups on the market tend to have big hunks of pork in them…
Also, as of this posting he is still alive – unless that album cover was lie??
I believe they play the song backwards at the end of the episode during the credits. I adore your blog!
You are absolutely correct on the song. I just don’t have the computer wizardry (a wizard did it) to figure out how to play the song un-backwards.
You get the sound file and open it up in some audio editor (Audacity being a popular open source program), and use one of the options that flips the file. Sound is just stored in bits of 1s and 0s, and it’s easy for editing software to reverse that.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. 1s AND 0s? That sounds a little too complicated.
Also. I’m currently sipping from a bowl of this soup right now. I agree with the verdict that it’s really ripping. I have leftover vegetables that I’ll probably use to make stock to use in a future batch of this soup.
Right on! This is by far the best soup recipe I’ve ever got from a backwards recording.
Suuuure blame the wizards!
Ah, for Glayvin out loud. Fine it was Xena, I admit it.