There is nothing better on a cold Fall night than a big bowl of soup that serves as a meal (there are probably some things that are better, but…). This soup is vegan, healthy, hearty, and takes 30 minutes to make. There are lots of shortcuts to soup that don’t require sitting in a crock pot, subject to every passerby lickin’ and lappin’ a “just a taste”. Especially with the SWINE running around. I could have named this “Simple Healthy Swine Fall Soup” if it took 8 hours to make and you have 8 kids.
Ingredients:
- 1 medium onion diced
- 2 carrots diced (like whole carrots, not those cheating “bites”)
- 2 celery stalks diced
- big handful of sliced mushrooms
- 1 large potato diced
- 1/4 cup instant brown rice
- 8 cups water
- 6 tsp of “Better than Bouillon” vegetable stock (this matters)
- 1 cup plain soy milk
- 2 tbsp cornstarch
- 4 tbsp cooking oil
- 1/2 tsp fresh chopped rosemary
- 2 tbsp fresh chopped parsley
Heat the cooking oil in a large soup pot (like really hot). Throw in all the veggies (they should sizzle), reduce heat to medium, and stir for 5 minutes. Add the water and vegetable base. Bring to a boil and then simmer for 10 minutes. Throw in the brown rice, soy milk, parsley, and rosemary. Cook another 5 minutes. Remove about two cups of the broth and transfer it to a small pot. Get it boiling hot. Mix the cornstarch with just enough water to make it look like milk. Stirring with a whisk, pour the gradually cornstarch into the small pot. The liquid will almost turn to putty. This is good. As soon as it gets to a putty state, remove from the heat. In the larger pot, stir the soup and add the putty. Stir and stir and stir until the putty has dissolved and the soup is thicker.
Taste the soup. You want the soup to taste 75% of the flavor you want to eat it at. If it is not salty enough, add more bouillon 1 tsp at a time and make sure it is stirred (to be at 75% the edible flavor). The soup will need to cool to room temperature before you store it in the fridge. There will be some evaporation and further mixing (or “getting aquatinted” as my late mother-in-law used to say). If you salt it to taste immediately, it will taste like the Dead Sea the following day. If you plan to eat a portion of the soup immediately for a meal, then salt each portion to taste.
If you did everything right, you should have a chunky and somewhat earthy soup that compliments the smell of the autumn leaves around you…minus the SWINE.
Tags: health, weight loss