Red Lentil, chickpea & chilli soup

Another lovely soup and another recipe from my mum. It's a nice thick soup with a pit of a punch,

2tsp cumin seeds

large pinch chilli flakes

1 onion, chopped

140g red lentils

850ml veg stock

200g canned chickpeas (drained)

400g chopped tomatoes

fat free fromage frais or fat free natural yogurt

frylight

salt/pepper to season

Blitz the chickpeas in a food processor until it's like a rough puree

In a large saucepan, dryfry the cumin seeds and chilli flakes for 1 min, or until they start to jump around the pan.

Spray pan with frylight and add onion and cook for 5 mins

Add stock, tomatoes and lentils and bring to the boil.

Simmer for 15 mins until the lentils have softened.

Add the chickpeas and heat through for 5 minutes.

Whizz the soup with a hand blender until it is soup and season with salt and pepper.  I add Shwartz black & red pepper for an extra kick.

Serve with a dollop of fat free fromage frais or natural yogurt.

Cock-a-leekie Soup (syn free)

Love soup at this time of the year. Especially love this one. My Mum's recipe.

Pint veg or chicken stock
Couple of handfuls of rice
1 chicken breast diced
1 leek sliced
1 carrot sliced
Salt/pepper

Add all ingredients to a pot, bring to the boil and then let simmer for 30 mins.

I like too add Swartz red & black pepper for an extra kick.

Enjoy x

Chicken & sweetcorn soup

Another quick and simple dish!  It's only 1 syn per portion and that's because cornstarch is added to thicken it.

Pint of chicken stock, 2-3 chicken breasts, spring onions, egg, garlic powder, salt/pepper

Cook the chicken in the stock, then shred the chicken.  Add creamed sweetcorn, spring onions and shredded chicken. Mix in the cornflour.  Drizzle in a beaten egg and mix.  I also mixed in about 1 teaspoon of garlic powder and some salt and pepper to season.

I drizzled some dark soy sauce on top and it was as simple as that! A really tasty bowl of soup!!

Vegetable Noodles

This is a very slurpy meal so next time I'm just going to bung everything in the one pot and just make it a soup - and add grated carrot rather than sliced - mainly cause it's easier for me to grate than to try and slice them up!

Serves 4 (syn free)

250g dried noodles

750ml chicken stock

3 garlic cloves crushed

2cm piece ginger grated

4 tablespoons dark soy sauce

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1/2 teaspoon chinese five-spice powder

1/4 teaspoon mild chilli powder

1 carrot cut thinly sliced

1/2 red pepper thinly sliced

2 spring onions finely chopped

handful bamboo shoots

1/2 onion sliced

Pour stock into pot and add garlic, ginger, soy sauce, worcestershire sauce, five spice powder, chill powder - stir well and bring to the boil then simmer for 5 minutes.

Add all vegetables except spring onions and cook for 5-10 minutes.

Make noodles as per packet instructions and drain.  Divide into bowls then add stock & vegetables.

Then get stuck in!!

As I said it was a bit of a watery, slurpy meal - but next time I'm just going to bung everything in the one pot and just make it a soup!!  

Chicken Noodle Soup

Chicken Noodle Soup

This is lovely and I had this for my lunch almost every day this week!  I had to add rice to mine as I had no noodles, but was equally as nice. Really easy to make too which is always a big thumbs up in my book!

Ingredients:

1 pint chicken stock using 2 chicken stock cubes

2 sticks celery finely chopped

1 onion finely chopped

1 clove crushed garlic

1 carrot finely chopped

1 chicken breast diced up into small pieces

1 teaspoon turmeric

60g dry noodles chopped 

salt and pepper to season

Throw everything in a pot and bring to the boil.  Simmer for about 30 minutes.  Add the noodles at the end.

This is also nice with a squeeze of honey added in at the end (but remember to syn it!)

Tomato & Lentil Soup

I love tomato soup!  Heinz Tomato soup is my all time favourite - it is a cure for everything - even hangovers!! haha

So I was keen to try and make a Slimming World friendly version.  I found various recipes online - all similar with variations and decided on this one. 

I wasn't sure if I was going to like it as one of the ingredients is celery which I can't stand, but it was chopped up so small in the food processor then blitzed at the end, you could barely tell it was in there.

I kept tasting it along the way and felt it needed a lot of seasoning, so I added Worcester Sauce, Tabasco and some Swartz red & black pepper (one of my cupboard staples!)

I am a great bread lover and that is one of my downfalls as I could just live off sandwiches, toast, bagels etc...so I'm trying to cut out as much bread as I can.  Normally I would have a great big hunk of bread with soup, so I added some croutons just for the crunch effect which were only 1 syn for the 5g that I had, but the soup itself is syn free.

So this was how I made it:

1 carton chopped tomatoes in garlic, 1 large onion, 1-2 cloves garlic, 2 sticks celery, 2 teaspoons ground cumin, pinch of cayenne pepper, 140g red lentils (rinsed),  pint of vegetable stock, salt and pepper, worcester sauce, couple of splashes of tabasco, a shake of black & red pepper.

The onions & celery were chopped in the food processor then fried off for a few minutes with Frylight.  Then added the tomatoes, lentils, stock, spices and brought to the boil. Simmered for about 30 minutes until the lentils are soft . Then blitzed in a blender.

I just seasoned as I went along till I found a taste that was right for me.

Turned out really nice and would get about 4 servings.  You end up with quite a thick soup so I watered mine down just a bit.  It's not quite up to my Heinz Tomato soup standard but will carry on with my quest.  It did have a slight kick in it though which I liked.

The only downside was the nice white t-shirt I had on was splattered - will I ever learn?!