The Cheap and Easy Soup I Make (Almost) Every Week

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https://rainbowplantlife.com/lemony-chickpea-soup/
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IN THIS VIDEO
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🔑 KEY MOMENTS
00:00 Introduction
00:18 Prep
01:29 Soup base
04:23 Chickpea puree

– Today I’m gonna show you how
to make lemony chickpea soup, which is one of my favorite
recipes from the past year. It’s made with super simple
budget friendly ingredients, but the flavor is outrageously good. It’s creamy and hearty but not heavy, which means it’s the kind of soup you can make all year round. So let’s get into it. (upbeat music)
We’re gonna get started with our chickpeas since
this is a chickpea soup and you need two cans of chickpeas. We are going to use them
in two different ways. So when you drain and rinse them, make sure to keep them separate and using them in two different ways is what makes the soup very fun. I’ll show you in a bit what I mean. Now we’re gonna move on to preparing our soup base aromatics, which are some pretty classic ingredients. We’ve got carrots and
onions and some garlic. And I am not someone who likes to have really big pieces of
vegetables in my soup. It’s just, I don’t know,
it’s not enjoyable. So I’m gonna finely dice the carrots so they kind of melt into the soup. Nice little carrot pile over here. And we’re gonna chop up
one large yellow onion and we’ll finely chop five garlic cloves. And the last thing we need to chop up is some fresh dill, a lot of it. This is a lemony chickpea soup and I think the flavor of
lemon plus dill is so good. But if you are not a fan of dill, you could use basil or parsley. We have one final ingredient to prep before we start cooking, and that is our long grain white rice. This is gonna naturally thicken the soup and you really don’t need
much, just a third of a cup. (vibrant music) You wanna get a dutch
oven or large sauce pan over medium high heat. And we’re gonna add a pretty
generous amount of olive oil. It really makes a
difference in the mouth feel and helping to bring out all
the flavors in our aromatics. All right, grab your
mountain of vegetables, see if this goes in without dropping, and add them to the hot oil. (food sizzling) Couple pinches of salt. And you wanna let these
cook for about 10 minutes to get them nice and
soft and a little brown. Basically, the longer you cook aromatics, especially onions, the better they taste. So that’s what we’re trying to do here. And while those are doing their thing, we will measure out a
few more flavor boosters. We’re gonna use two
tablespoons of tomato paste, two teaspoons of dried oregano, a half teaspoon of coriander. And this is gonna kind of
enhance the lemony flavors ’cause this is a bit citrusy. Also half teaspoon of turmeric, which will give the soup a really lovely golden,
almost orange color and some red pepper flakes. I want a noticeable kick, so I’m going with a half teaspoon, but if you want just a little kick, you could do a quarter teaspoon. And for my baby mouth,
just go ahead and omit it. Looking good. As you can see, our onions are starting to look really nice and
a little bit golden. If you see a recipe that tells you to cook onions for two minutes, you might as well just
not even add the onions. You can’t really do
anything in two minutes. Really wanna sweat them down, get them nice and soft,
start to turn golden, and they’re gonna be
so much more delicious. Get all that garlic in there. Starting to smell good. We are cooking. Stir this frequently so
the garlic doesn’t burn, should take about two minutes. Add the tomato paste spice mixture. Put some elbow grease into it. You really wanna make sure the tomato paste coats everything nicely. If things do start to get a little toasty, go ahead and deglaze with
the splash of water or broth. (food sizzling) That’s a good looking soup base. In goes the rice. You wanna make sure you
cook it for like a minute just so it absorbs every
bit of delicious flavor that’s in the pot. Similar to when you’re making risotto and you kind of toast the rice and the butter and the wine and all the goodness
before you add the liquid. Now we’re gonna grab one
can of the chickpeas, we’ll use the other one in a minute. A little salt and it’s best friend pepper. And same thing, toss
those chickpeas around so they get all that yummy flavor on them. Next we’re gonna pour in
four cups of vegetable broth. Store bought vegetable broth
is usually not very good. This is definitely the
best brand I have tried. If you want use like a vegan bouillon, the better than bouillon plus water, you could also do that. Glug, glug, glug. And we’re gonna add half of the dill now, we’ll save some for the end. It’s pretty thin now, but the soup is gonna thicken
more as the rice cooks. Bring this to a boil and then you’re gonna cover the pan and let it simmer on low for 15 minutes until the rice is tender. And in the meantime, we will
make our chickpea puree, which is what makes
this soup super special. As I mentioned earlier, we’ve reserved one can of chickpeas and we’re going to use them
to make a chickpea puree. We’re gonna blend it with a few other high impact ingredients and it’s going to thicken the soup and add so much good flavor. You need a half cup of
creamy plant-based milk. This is full fat oat milk. A barista style milk will work. A canned light coconut milk also works. You just wanna steer clear of anything that’s like super thin, and chickpeas. And for the lemony flavor, we’re going to zest one large lemon. (gentle music) Ooh.
(gentle music continues) This is like household cleaner, but in the best way possible. And add two tablespoons of the juice. Juicy lemon is the most satisfying. Season with salt and pepper. And now to add some really
lovely savoriness to this, we’re gonna add a quarter
cup of nutritional yeast and a tablespoon of white miso. If you can’t find this
for whatever reason, you could try a teaspoon of soy sauce, taste and adjust accordingly. But it should be available at most well-stocked grocery stores. And it’s time to blend. (blender whizzing) By the way, you don’t have
to use a stand blender. A food processor also works really well. All right, this should be good. (gentle music) It’s kind of like a savory hummus. – [Cameraman] Savory hummus as opposed to the sweet hummus that you like? – Yeah, we’ve like seen people
do like chocolate hummus. “This is the best dessert ever.” No, it’s not, Diane. A little more lemon. (gentle music) One last thing to prep
while the soup finishes, we’re gonna chop up, just
roughly, some baby spinach. You could also use baby kale
and this is about three ounces, but you could also go up
to four or five ounces if you wanna get more greens in. Let’s see what our soup looks like. You can see it’s thickened up already and it’s gonna get even creamier when we add the chickpea puree. Starting to look good. Add in your baby spinach, turn up the heat a little bit and just simmer this for a minute or two until the spinach wilts. It’ll happen pretty quickly. Final finishing touches. We need some more lemon juice just for that super bright
and light lemony flavor. It’s actually one of the
reasons I love this soup is that it’s like creamy and rich, but it’s so bright and light that you can have it any time of year. I even eat it in summer because
it’s not like a heavy soup. And the last of our dill, (gentle music) few cracks of pepper. (gentle music continues) It’s time to serve. But first I need to get
something very important. (lively music) Bread. Cannot have soup without bread. (lively music continues) I’m so excited. (lively music continues) You can find the full principle recipe in the description box below. And if you want even more soup recipes, check out this playlist. I’ll see you in the next video. Bye.