How to turn a vegetable soup into a complete dinner

2021-01-28T17:07:55.336Z

With a base of golden vegetables, some carbohydrates and protein so you don't go to bed hungry, and spices, herbs and other extras to add flavor, we can prepare a lot of different creams for dinner.

We have changed the year, but there are things that remain the same;

as the last meal of the day continues to surprise us off guard, tired, with low imaginations and the helpful possibility of "eating anything out there" limited in many regions by the containment measures of the covid19.

After the ideas to prepare quick and simple dinners with cheese, bread, eggs, canned fish, chicken breast or that also fix the next meal, we go with a classic foodie that always triumphs: vegetable creams, which we will turn into a complete dinner with some additions that will provide an extra flavor, quality proteins and tricks to make them more satiating.

The vegetables

Virtually all vegetables are likely to go into a cream, and for it to come out well you just have to follow one rule: do not put ingredients that, due to their state, you would not put in other preparations.

Treating the creams as if they were the compost bin, cooking in them poached potatoes, zucchini that no longer know the smoothness and that rest of paleolithic onion that screams "right to a dignified death" from the bottom of the refrigerator, is never a good idea.

In a puree, just like in any other dish, you will find exactly what you put on it.

In which cases can we take advantage of ingredients?

When they have an aesthetic defect, due to a blow that affects a specific area but not the rest, that is, something that only affects the outer layers;

for example in an onion or a leek.

The larger and harder leaves or the stems of the spinach that we are going to use for a sauté -without going through water before-, an apple with a dark piece that we can remove or the stalks of the chard can also go there perfectly, just like the stem of broccoli, cabbage or cauliflower.

If you do not have the life to visit the greengrocer so much, try to always have all the frozen vegetables you can at hand: peas, green beans, spinach, artichokes and others will be great allies for your dinners.

Some canned vegetables, such as good canned tomatoes, will also serve this purpose: if you drain them while preserving the canned juice and seasoned with herbs, onion and potato, and then recover the water to boil them, you will have a very powerful cream. flavor that will not need too many additives.

Remember to use good quality tomatoes, to which they have not added too much acid for their conservation, and always test in case you have to rectify them with a little sugar.

Carrots, whole pumpkin, turnips, parsnips or onions last a long time in good conditions, and only with these ingredients we can already prepare many different creams: for example, with curry paste and coconut milk, served with a little lime to squeeze when eating;

with basil, a little dried tomato and some cured cheese such as Parmesan or Manchego or with thyme, rosemary, sesame -a kind of quick za'atar- and fresh cheese.

Taking a look at the fruit bowl doesn't hurt either: apples and pears can play a great role in spinach, pumpkin, zucchini creams or those with blue cheese.

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In addition to the potato or sweet potato, always recurring, there are other great allies to give forcefulness to a vegetable cream -since we don't want to go to bed hungry-: legumes.

A pot of lentils or chickpeas will enrich any cream, providing quality nutrients (and easily digested, much more than when we consume them whole and with skins).

Some oat flakes, the same ones used for

porridge,

will also make our cream more satiating and will provide fiber.

The techniques

The simplest trick to making a vegetable soup a party and not a hospital food is to brown the ingredients so that Maillard's reaction will do its best and the flavor will rise to the stratosphere.

How can you get this?

In several ways: the simplest and most accessible, do it in the same pot in which we are going to prepare the cream, with a drizzle of oil.

It is important that we cut them into small pieces to increase the surface to be caramelized and, therefore, also the flavor: about 15 or 20 minutes will be enough, giving a few turns during the process to achieve a uniform browning.

Almost all vegetables benefit from this move, you just have to watch with the outer layers of leeks, chives or garlic, which can burn easily;

the celery leaves and other vegetables will also burn before browning, and the aromatic three-quarters of the same: better add them directly when we add the cooking liquid.

Another way to brown vegetables is to bake them, something especially interesting when we already have to turn on the oven for anything else (always remember that it has two trays, and using them at the same time helps us optimize energy consumption).

In this case, it is not necessary to cut them so small, and in the case of the pumpkin we can avoid the hassle of removing the skin: we can roast it open in half lengthwise, and then empty it with a spoon and without leaving our wrist in the process .

Are you more lazy to turn on the oven than to reread

Joyce's

Ulysses

The fast pot is your chalice and Mikel López Iturriaga, your pastor.

“Conclusions of my last pumpkin cream: baking it before is very good, but with a pressure cooker and putting an apple in the game you can obtain similar results: caramelization, more intense flavor, toasted color and an absolutely delicious acid touch if you use apple idem".

As it did?

She peeled and coarsely chopped half a fiddle squash, a couple of carrots, an apple, an onion, and a half a leek, and sautéed it all for between five and ten minutes (you can double the amount of ingredients, no problem).

“You add the spices that come out of the turmeric: I put 1/2 level teaspoon of curry, the same cumin and 1/4 of ginger.

You give it a couple of turns;

When the spices release their odor, you dunk them with vegetable or chicken broth.

You close and cook for half an hour at high pressure: depressurize, crush and cream ready ”.

Creaminess

If you only have milk or unsweetened vegetable drink and you want to achieve a texture as silky as possible, add it together with the broth or water in which you are going to boil the vegetables;

in this way some of its water will evaporate and the protein and fat will be concentrated.

Other ingredients that you can use -in order from least to densest- are evaporated milk, coconut milk, cooking cream, natural yogurt-cow or vegetable, unsweetened-, Greek yogurt, quark cheese and skyr.

The silky tofu also provides a very pleasant texture, although it has a lot of water and must be taken into account so that it is not too liquid.

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Depending on what you are going to put on top of your cream, you can add an extra of the creamy element chosen at the time of serving it: one of my favorite combinations is the spinach and zucchini cream topped with a few cubes of raw salmon seasoned with a little of salt and pepper, others peeled tart apple, a generous dollop of thick yogurt in the middle, and more pepper on top.

When in the same spoonful you notice the taste of the cream, the texture of the yogurt and how it enhances the iodine in the fish and, finally, you bite into the sour, fresh and crisp apple, you understand everything at once.

Tips to optimize

Although it will delay a bit the longed-for moment to put the spoon in it, there is a great system to increase the flavor of your vegetable creams without spending half a euro more.

When you peel the vegetables and remove the skin of the carrots -or their leaves-, the pumpkin, the turnip, the parsnip or the onion, the green, the outer layer and the roots of the leek or the part closest to the stem of the zucchini, don't throw them away.

Wash them very well, transfer them to a saucepan with a tablespoon of oil and turn them over medium high heat for about 12 until they are a little golden and cover with a little more than a liter of water.

Bring to a boil for an hour over low heat and you will have a tasty broth that will make your cream come to the fore.

If you do it while you are preparing the food, at night it will be ready -in the end, the most difficult thing to cook is to get to it-, and if you start to brown the vegetables from the cream when the broth takes 40 minutes to the fire, it will you will have ready when you have to cover them to boil

Always preparing vegetable cream for two meals - just like any stew, stew or pottage - is first class in housekeeping: it costs exactly the same effort and the same time, and you have two dishes solved.

Do you want to use the same cream as a single dish for dinner and a lighter version of it as a first on another day?

No problem: prepare 1.5 times the thickest version of the cream, separate the remaining 0.5 and add more liquid to lighten it.

You can use water, vegetable or chicken broth, milk, unsweetened vegetable drink or a combination of broth and evaporated milk, yogurt, cream, or coconut milk.

What you want is to prepare two different dishes with the same base?

Prepare the basic version, only with the golden vegetables, broth or water and salt.

Crush, separate into two halves and add to each of them a different dairy or vegetable drink, or play with spices and aromatics: if you put curry powder, yogurt and ground coriander seeds in one half and basil in the other, Oregano and cured cheese you will have two completely different creams: change what you put on top of them as well and the effect will be even more evident.

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Vegetable creams usually come out of the freezer just as well as they came in, except if they have potatoes: in this case you will have to give them a boil and stir them a little with a rod or a fork to regain the texture.

Also be careful with putting a lot of potato in the creams and mashing them for a long time: the starch that they release during the process will give the puree a slightly chewy texture (something that is not necessarily bad: if you like it that way, go ahead).

further

The egg is one of the best allies of simple dinners, due to its versatility, how easy it is to prepare them in any way, its affordable price and how easy it is to always have them on hand.

A chopped hard-boiled egg, a few cubes of ham or cheese and some croutons - much better baked or in the pan without oil than fried - are a classic garnish that completes any cream;

while the egg grilled or cooked for four and a half minutes also provide a semi-liquid yolk that serves as a sauce.

You can add other proteins to finish the puree, in formats as different as your fridge and your imagination can reach.

Do you have some cooked fish that can languish in the container because it won't last for a portion?

Crumble it over the cream and cheer.

Also has it run a little dry?

Make a vinaigrette whose ingredients go well with the ingredients of the puree and crumble it in it: instant rehydration.

Sounds like a very good idea but you don't have that remnant?

Open a can of sardines and remove the fillets.

Fancy something finer?

An envelope of smoked salmon and solved.

More flavour?

Mix with your cream some of the liquid from a can of mussels, or the oil of some anchovies, and put the chicha on top.

Nuts and fresh herbs can also help us put the finishing touch to these dishes: mint with peanuts, cashews and coriander or basil and pistachios are combinations that always work, remember that when you don't know what to do with the leftovers of that bunch you bought to prepare a ceviche or pesto.

Do you have a tendency to lazy nights and an empty fridge?

Having a jar with buckwheat and another with the finest oat flakes can be your salvation: sprinkle a couple of tablespoons on top of your cream and enjoy dinner.