Saturday 24 May 2008

A Really Good Soup Recipe (dedicated to cyclingphun)

Tasty Red Soup

Recently, cyclingphun (an unblushing admirer of my muesli recipe) asked whether healthy eating had to be so expensive. My answer was no, if you bought produce in season and made a lot of soup. The response to that was to ask for some recipes. Here is one of my favourites, which is cheap, healthy, incredibly easy to make, colourful and quite delicious. Serve it with garlic bread, if you like.


Bell Pepper and Chili Soup
preparation time: 10 minutes
cooking time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:
8 oz/225 g red bell peppers, seeded and sliced
1 onion, sliced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 green chili, chopped
1 ½ cups of crushed tomatoes (canned ones are fine, just go with the low-sodium version)
2 ½ cups of vegetable stock (I make mine from cubes from the health food store, again low-sodium)
2 tbsp chopped basil
basil sprigs to garnish

Directions:
Put the bell peppers in a large pan with the onion, garlic and chili. Add the tomatoes and stock and bring to a boil, stirring well.

Reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes, until the peppers have softened.

Take the soup from the pot and process in a food processor or blender until smooth. Return to a clean pot, add basil and cook until hot again. Garnish the soup with fresh basil sprigs and serve immediately.

Serves 4

Nutritional Information:
per serving

Calories: 55
Protein: 2 g
Carbohydrate: 11 g
Sugars: 10 g
Fat: 0.5 g

Additional comments:
I keep a jar of pickled jalapeño chilis in the refrigerator at all times. To do this, take a Mason or similar glass jar, fill it with fresh jalapeños that have been washed and slit along the sides and then top the jar up with Japanese rice vinegar. That’s all there is to it.

The soup freezes very well, so you can make a big batch and thaw it as needed.

6 comments:

Judi said...

Yum.

Anonymous said...

More recipes please.

Cycling Phun said...

You, my dear friend, are the bomb! The recipe sounds awesome! I will definitely have to check it out, and I'll let you know what I think. I love to make a ton of soup, freeze it in one cup containers and thaw as needed. I actually can't wait to try this.

Anonymous said...

Will be trying this recipe.
Just want to check that you meant to fry the onions, peppers and garlic before adding next ingredients??
Another variation I'll be trying is pre-roasting the peppers under the grill to give them a smokier flavor.

Groover said...

That sounds so delicious and it's getting cold here in Oz. Winter = Soup time! Will try this soon. Thanks for posting.

Sprocketboy said...

I am a bit surprised, and pleased, that my recipe has attracted so much interest!

There is actually no need to fry the onions, peppers and garlic beforehand. I generally do not use raw onions in cooking but it works fine here, and the lack of cooking oil also keeps the calories down. Roasted peppers taste would work quite well, though.

The jalapeno really gives the soup a nice bite. I like to make gazpacho in summer and, in many ways, that is a cold variation of this soup.