Spiced chickpea soup with lemon
youryum.com/recipes/spiced-chickpea-soup · serves 4
Blend half of it, leave the rest
Blending all of it gives you baby food. Blending none of it gives you thin broth with things in it. Half is the answer.
- Vegan
- Vegetarian
- Gluten free
- Dairy free
- Prep
- 10 min
- Cook
- 30 min
- Total
- 40 min
- Serves
- 4
- Per serving
- 312kcal
- Effort
- Easy
Blend all of it and you have baby food. Blend none of it and you have thin broth with things floating in it.
Half is the answer, and it is one of those small decisions that makes a cheap soup taste like it came from somewhere with a chef. You get body from the blended half and something to chew from the other, in the same spoonful, and the whole thing costs about a pound to make.
Ingredients
Equipment
- Stick blender
Method
-
Soften the base without rushing
Oil, onion and carrot with a good pinch of salt over medium heat for a full ten minutes. You want the onion genuinely soft and sweet, not just translucent at the edges.
This is the step everyone shortens and it is the reason cheap soup tastes thin. Ten minutes here is worth more than any amount of stock powder later.
-
Bloom the spices in the fat
Garlic for a minute, then the cumin, coriander and cinnamon stirred into the oil for about thirty seconds until they smell like themselves.
Dry spices need fat and heat to release anything. Tipped straight into liquid they stay dusty and the soup tastes of stock rather than spice.
-
Simmer
Chickpeas and stock in, bring it up to a simmer, then twenty minutes uncovered.
-
Blend half of it
Stick blender straight into the pot, in short bursts, moving it around rather than parking it in one spot.
Stop when roughly half of it is smooth and you can still see whole chickpeas rolling around. Ten seconds too long and it is a purée, and there is no way back from that.
-
All the lemon, off the heat
Take it off the heat and add the juice of the whole lemon, then taste for salt.
Add the coriander in the bowl rather than the pot so it stays green and tastes of something.
What's in it
Nutrition, buying and storage notes for the ingredients this recipe leans on.
On stock
A cube is fine. The soup has enough going on that a homemade stock is a waste of a homemade stock.
What matters more is salt timing. Cubes are salty, so hold back on salt until after the simmer has reduced things, or you will overshoot and be stuck.
Making it more of a meal
- Wilt a few handfuls of spinach in at the end, after blending.
- Fry a spoonful of chickpeas separately until crisp and drop them on top.
- Toast in the bottom of the bowl, soaked in the soup, which is thrift rather than fashion.
Nutrition
Per serving, for 4 servings. Estimated from ingredient weights — it moves with the brands and cuts you actually use.
| Nutrient | Per serving |
|---|---|
| Calories | 312 kcal |
| Protein | 13 g |
| Carbohydrate | 42 g |
| Fibre | 12 g |
| Fat | 10 g |
Source: Estimated from ingredient weights, USDA FoodData Central
Questions
Can I use dried chickpeas?
Is it vegan?
Why is mine bland?
Can I make it in a pressure cooker?
Filed under
Cook this next
All recipes →
Charred red pepper and chickpea stew
The peppers go under the grill until they are properly black in patches. That ten minutes is the whole flavour of the dish.
Harissa roast chicken traybake
Chicken thighs roasted on top of chickpeas and red peppers, so the fat renders down into everything underneath. One tray, one wash-up.
Two-ingredient yogurt flatbread
No yeast, no proving, no oven. Flour and yogurt in a bowl, and hot bread twenty minutes later.