Serve Lentils at New Year to Wish for Prosperity / 🇲🇽 Mexico

In the Mexican New Year tradition, lentils express a wish for abundance. A bowl at the beginning of the year is a way to picture a table with enough food for the people who gather around it. Lentil soup is an especially simple version: it brings the wish straight to the meal instead of asking everyone to take part in a separate ceremony. Serve the bowl before or with dinner, or make it part of the first meal of the new year.

1. Set aside the lentils and something to serve them in. If you already have a favourite lentil soup recipe, this is a good night to make it.
2. Cook dry lentils in water or stock until tender, following the timing on the packet, or warm cooked lentils with stock. Add the seasonings you normally like in soup.
3. Ladle a small serving for each person who wants to take part. Invite everyone to think of one thing they hope their household will have enough of in the coming year.
4. Eat the lentils as part of the celebration. Save any extra soup for another meal.

A small bowl can fit alongside dishes your guests already expect to see. You can also make it the first warm dish you put on the table after the turn of the year.

Mexican descriptions of the New Year table make room for several different gestures. Lentils are associated with having enough, while people may give a different wish to each grape or take a suitcase outside if they want to travel. In a version practised by some households in Mexico City, a spoonful of lentils follows the grapes. Soup gives the same ingredient a place at a meal rather than a single moment in the countdown.

The attraction of the custom is its scale. A big hope for the coming year can sit in a bowl small enough to pass across the table. As everyone takes a taste, abundance is easy to picture in an everyday form: there is something warm to eat and someone to share it with.