This article makes it clear that recipes for lean soups for every day can be so varied that they can compete with meat dishes. The first dishes from the cuisine of different countries will help to significantly diversify the daily diet and make it more healthy and light without compromising on taste.
What is the feature of lean dishes?
Lean soups are the first dishes that do not contain meat and meat products, fish, eggs and dairy products (sour cream, cream, cheese and butter). For a simpler example: a vegan’s daily food is a lean food that has no animal products + fish and other marine and river inhabitants. Typically, recipes for lean soups are simple due to the small amount of ingredients and the lack of meat and additives from it, so it often takes no more than an hour to prepare such a first dish.
The second distinctive feature is a low calorie content, and for the same reason. It is no secret to anyone that all these products are quite high in calories, especially when combined with each other (meat and cheese, sour cream and fish), which provides the basis for the development of not only excess weight, but also various diseases.
Examples of lean soups
Most likely, many, besides the recipe for lean pea soup, will not remember anything, and after all, many cuisines of the world have in their arsenal first courses without products that are taboo among fasting. For instance:
- Lean cabbage soup existed in Russia during the time of Ivan the Terrible, and this is more than six hundred years ago!
- A cabbage soup cousin - Ukrainian borsch - also has a vegetarian option, not only without meat, but even without sour cream and lard, which are considered mandatory in this dish.
- The recipe for lean soup with beans has long been watched by all vegans in the world, because legumes are the best suppliers of protein for the human body. Moreover, in different countries it is cooked in its own way, adding spices and vegetables inherent in the region.
- Spanish tomato gazpacho soup is served not only at home, but also in many restaurants around the world.
This list can be continued indefinitely, but it is even better to try to cook your own lean soup according to the recipes below.
Fasulada: versatile soup
Fasulada is a thick lean bean soup, the recipe of which came from Greece. Its peculiarity is that if less water is added to it during cooking, it turns into a full-fledged second dish resembling lobio. And if you add more water, then the fragrant soup will be an excellent first dish. Convenient, isn't it?
Step by step recipe:
- Bean soup is lean, so the whole broth gives beans, which should be soaked overnight before starting cooking. 400 grams of red beans are soaked in water in a ratio of 1: 3. In the morning, pouring water, pour clean and set on fire.
- Peel and chop one large carrot and 1/4 of a small celery root into small pieces.
- Dip 2-3 tomatoes with boiling water and peel, cut into pieces.
- 3 tbsp. tablespoons of olive oil, warm in a pan, and then put carrots and celery, sprinkle 1.5 teaspoons of salt and 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper, as well as the same amount of sugar. Allow the vegetables to soften slightly, add two tbsp to them. tablespoons of tomato paste and chopped tomatoes. Mix thoroughly and let the vegetables stew for five to eight minutes under a lid.
Next, the vegetable dressing is sent to the beans, covered tightly with a lid and cooked until tender, which is determined by the softness of the bean when biting. When serving, such a soup must be sprinkled with a generous portion of fresh parsley.
Vegan Lentil Soup
The recipe for lean bean soup from the most attractive of legumes is very similar to the usual preparation of pea soup. With one difference: lentils do not require long soaking, because it is cooked for no more than twenty minutes. Although if you need to cook the soup for twenty minutes (the time of cooking the potatoes in the soup), the lentils are still soaked two hours before cooking.
To make vegan lean lentil soup, you need to:
- If lentils are used without soaking, then rinse them and fill them with clean water in a saucepan. Green or orange bean is used, although from the second option the soup will be more fun due to the bright color. For 1 cup of legumes, three liters of water will be required. If you prefer thick soup, then the amount of liquid can be reduced to two. Put to cook the lentils, and before boiling, remove the foam that forms, as when cooking meat broth. After boiling, make the fire less.
- Peel and cut into three cubes three potatoes, and when the lentils are half ready, put it in the soup.
- Chop one onion into small cubes and fry on three tbsp. tablespoons of olive or coconut oil. Coconut will add a unique flavor to the dish.
- When the onion is browned, add one large carrot grated to it and continue to pass the vegetables until soft.
- In a mortar, add 1/2 teaspoon of a mixture of peppers (black, allspice and pink), add to them 1/4 of the grated nutmeg and a pinch of dry oregano. Pour this spicy mixture to the vegetables, which are sent to the soup when the potatoes are soft. At this point, lentils will already begin to lose their shape, boiled in mashed potatoes.
Chop a small bunch of dill and parsley, pour into soup, salt to taste. Let it boil and turn off the heat. After the soup has infused for ten minutes, it can be served at the table.
Pea Puree Soup
This dish is prepared in the same way as lentil soup, with a slight difference: peas are soaked for at least five hours, then the cooking process of the soup will be no more than forty minutes, which is very convenient for those who are limited in time. And the first soaked peas are laid in the water for soup, and after twenty minutes of cooking - potatoes.
Further, the principle of preparation is no different from the lentil soup presented above, and to turn this lean soup into mashed potatoes, the recipe tells you to use a blender: just mashed the dish before serving and sprinkle with fresh herbs. It’s very good to serve garlic croutons with this soup, which can be soaked in mashed soup and enjoy their crunch with pleasure.
Soup with rice and herbs
The simplest recipe for lean rice soup can be used to prepare a dietary dish, which, thanks to the enveloping properties of this cereal, makes the soup useful for digestion.
Boil three liters of water with two leaves of laurel, a small piece of parsley or celery root and lay in it three potatoes, peeled and chopped with cubes.
While the potatoes are boiling, on the second burner, heat three tablespoons of vegetable oil in a frying pan, put one finely chopped onion in it and fry until light brown. Then there send one grated carrot and spices to taste. The easiest way is to add Indian curry mixture for rice (1/2 tsp), the soup will turn out to be unusually fragrant, with an oriental flavor. Strain vegetables until soft and remove from stove.
When the potatoes become soft, add 1/2 cups of rice, while it is necessary to mash a few pieces of potatoes in mashed potatoes and dissolve in soup, thus giving it great richness. Boil the soup over medium heat, and when the rice comes to condition, pour vegetable dressing into the pan. Cut a bunch of dill and add to the soup three minutes before the end of cooking.
Rice noodle soup with sesame seeds
Recipes of lean soups for Asian countries are common, especially with a great variety of rice noodles. Given that meat broth is not used, soy sauce in combination with sesame seeds will set a special flavoring note - these products are most often used in Asian cuisine. List of required ingredients:
- One pack of rice noodles.
- Four glasses of vegetable stock.
- One at a time: carrots and bell peppers.
- Two hundred grams of cabbage.
- Three tbsp. tablespoons of sesame oil.
- 2 tbsp. tablespoons of soy sauce.
- 4 cloves of garlic.
- A large bunch of green onions.
- One Art. a spoon of light sesame seeds.
- Salt to taste.
Vegetables are finely chopped, garlic is crushed in the press. All stages of heat treatment should be performed in the same dish: for this you can use a large stewpan or a wide pan with thick walls. Warm the oil in it, fry the onions and garlic for one minute, adding sesame at the end. Next, send the remaining vegetables there and stew for another seven minutes, covering the dishes with a lid.
Then we add the broth to the vegetables and let the soup boil, then pour the sauce, add to taste, and you can add a little hot pepper if desired. Put the rice noodles in the soup, and when it boils again, mix well and turn it off. Let the dish brew for a few minutes and then serve.
Pickle
This tasty soup with a sour taste can be prepared not only with meat, but also without it, because pearl barley - the main ingredient of pickle - gives a good fat and a long feeling of satiety. The main point of this recipe for lean soup: how much to soak barley, because it is known that this cereal is cooked without soaking for a long time. Some culinary experts claim that half an hour is enough for the barley to swell and cook quickly. This is an erroneous opinion, although perhaps, in their opinion, two hours is fast.
In fact, in order to cook lean soup quickly and tasty according to the recipe of grandmothers who knew a lot about good cuisine, it is necessary to soak barley for at least four hours. The most convenient thing is at night, putting it in a cool place, and in the morning, rinsing under running water and clean the bay, put it in a cook. Thanks to this method, the soup will cook literally in forty minutes. The whole recipe looks like this:
- For one glass of pearl barley, 2.5 cups of water is taken.
- One at a time: carrots and onions.
- Three large potatoes.
- Five medium sized pickles.
- For refueling: three tbsp. tablespoons of vegetable oil, two - tomato paste, 1/3 teaspoon of black pepper and the same amount of coriander. Salt is put on the basis of taste considerations, since cucumbers are salty in themselves. It will also be useful to add two leaves of laurel.
The cooking method is simple: barley is boiled for half an hour, then peeled and sliced potatoes are added, and while it is boiling, in a pan, the traditional method is used to prepare vegetable dressing from sautéed onions, carrots and tomato paste.
When the potatoes are cooked until cooked, add the dressing to the soup and warm one tablespoon of oil in the same pan. We put cucumbers cut into cubes or thin half rings and fry them a little, no more than three minutes, and then pour them into pickle. Five minutes before the end of cooking, put finely chopped parsley or dill in the soup.
Vegetarian vegetable soup with bulgur
This dish is quite common among vegetarians for the reason that it is prepared from literally everything that is at hand. This lean soup is prepared according to the recipe simply, deliciously combined with slices of yeast-free bread, dried in a frying pan or in the oven. The list of essential ingredients is as follows:
- 2.5-3 liters of water;
- four potato tubers;
- two carrots;
- one each: onion, young zucchini, tomato and bell pepper;
- 1/4 of a small head of white cabbage;
- 2/3 cup bulgur;
- one glass of tomato juice;
- a bunch of fresh parsley;
- 1/3 teaspoon coriander, black pepper;
- a pinch of zira or nutmeg.
Boil the water, add the diced potatoes to it and boil until half cooked, then add the cabbage, cut into small squares, add the washed cereal after five minutes and cook, stirring occasionally.
In a pan in three tablespoons of oil, fry the chopped onion until soft, add grated carrots and thinly chopped pepper. Stew vegetables for eight minutes, and then add spices and zucchini to them, cut into small cubes. After five minutes, pour the tomato juice, allow the mass to boil and then pour the entire contents of the pan into the soup. Salt to taste and add the tomato sliced in small slices.
Let the soup boil for five minutes and turn off the stove. Such a recipe for lean soup every day can be different, because the combination of vegetables can vary depending on the season and the desire of the cook.
Thai Tofu Soup
And this recipe for a delicious lean soup came from Thailand itself: it is quite versatile, because the mushrooms in the recipe can be replaced with shrimp or chicken meat, turning a lean dish into a more satisfying and high-calorie version. The soup is distinguished by its spicy taste and light pungency inherent in any Asian cuisine.
To prepare Thai soup, you need to prepare the following products:
- One liter of vegetable stock or water.
- 150 grams of mushrooms (champignons or shiitake).
- One hundred grams of tofu cheese.
- 50 grams of funchose (rice noodle).
- Two tbsp. tablespoons of soy sauce.
- Two cloves of garlic.
- Freshly squeezed lemon juice.
- Five cm long ginger root.
- A small chili pepper.
- A bunch of cilantro.
Cut the cheese into cubes, and finely chop the cilantro and mix with soy sauce. Combine the cheese and the green mass and leave to marinate, while the soup will cook. Despite the abundance of ingredients, it is prepared very simply: boil the vegetable broth with pepper, garlic and ginger for ten minutes, and then strain.
Cut the champignons into small slices. Boil the spicy broth again, put the mushrooms in it and boil for another fifteen minutes over medium heat. Next, put funchose, salt according to taste preferences and, after the soup boils, turn off the stove.
We put a few slices of tofu in a portioned plate along with herbs and the rest of the sauce, pour one tablespoon of lemon juice and add hot soup to the top. This soup is served immediately after cooking.