Winter time is soup time. When it’s cold outside, it’s snowing or it’s raining, the soup warms your stomach and soul. By the way, it devours all the leftovers and can be reinterpreted over and over again.
Why do one-pot meals have what it takes to be a favorite? Not only do they fill entire families and feel like they’re cuddled on the inside, they’re also really easy to make.
Once the ingredients are chopped, they don’t need much attention – close the lid and the soup cooks easily over low heat. Effort can also be kept to a minimum when washing dishes, because countless pots and pans don’t want to be washed.
With or without meat, which is always boiled first with onions: root vegetables such as beetroot, parsnips, Jerusalem artichokes, chutney or different types of cabbage are usually cooked together in a vegetable or meat broth.
If you want to make a soup of lentils, beans and peas, some planning is necessary, because it is best to soak the legumes overnight beforehand.
Fragrant greetings from the Levant kitchen
Kitchens of the world bring fresh ideas to the pot. Berlin blogger Peggy Schatz cooks up Savoy soup with dates seasoned with harissa powder. Or treat yourself with a fragrant salutation from the Levant kitchen, using rose water for soaking.
For white beans, for example, which you cook with Brussels sprouts and potatoes. For this purpose, 500 to 600 grams of white beans are soaked overnight in water flavored with 2 tablespoons of dried rose petals.
In her blog Growing Wild, Schatz describes how she creatively expands recipes and lives up to her fondness for “foods made with wild herbs, wild vegetables, wild fruits, and the wild parts of trees.”
Sweet potato mulch just adds a little something
Peggy Schatz loves the interplay between pungent and fruity notes, for example in her Sweet’n Spicy veggie pot: “In the oven, the kale acquires a concentrated, slightly sour aroma. This chimes with the sweet and sour balance of the pineapple,” Peggy Schatz says. It plays the role of the second color.
Vinegar also provides a quick fruity boost in thick winter stews. Balsamic lentil soup rounds out, and elderberry vinegar goes well with sweet potato soup. Another suggestion: For the sweet potato and radish soup, she fried sweet potato chips.
For this, you keep a piece of sweet potato, grate it, and dry it with kitchen paper. Then you heat the cooking oil in a small saucepan, add the carefully grated sweet potatoes and brown them slightly. Scoop out the sweet potato chips with a perforated spoon and place on a piece of kitchen paper to drain.
Smell thanks to cumin and turmeric
Lemon lentil soup on Melanie and Sonk’s full-value blog Bromerloh is especially popular with parents of young children who don’t have much time to chop up much beforehand. Because it’s on the table in less than 20 minutes.
“The soup doesn’t need any ginger or garlic, just chop up the shallots,” Melanie says. “Turmeric and cumin provide a nice flavor, as does fresh lemon juice,” Sunkee adds. Roasted cabbage, chard, or pak choy make green accents.
Sokok – raw, heavily spiced sausage from Bulgaria
Antonia Hasenurl on blog-bulgarien.de reveals how to spice up the basic recipe for Bulgarian bean soup: it uses 250 grams of lima or bean sprouts, which you soak overnight beforehand. “Of course you can also use canned beans, but then they have fewer nutrients,” she says.
Cook the beans with the brine, one tomato, one onion and carrots each, and three cassler slices. Add finely chopped onions, fried in oil, as a lid. As an alternative to cassler, seasoned raw sausage can also be used.
Sokok from Bulgaria is made with beef or veal and lamb, depending on the region. And you can change the soup to your liking: dill can be used as a substitute for the marinade in the pot. Sour cream gives a creamy texture mixed with lemon for a refreshing touch.