Sunday Support Group: Health Bomb Soup

This Instant Pot stew has loads of what's good for ya, like ginger, kale, lentils, and turmeric—plus it's rich and tasty, and hearty enough to be a meal. I thought it was a standout, hence the urge to share. Makes one meal for six or six meals for one. Very easy to make. The Instant Pot is now just $49, thanks to their popularity—I think they cost $179 (?) before they became all the rage.

Adapted from a recipe by Lisa Le, the Viet Vegan. Her version is spicy, with peppers. This is the Mike-tested variant, so Lisa gets the credit but not the blame.

Ingredients
2 tbsp. vegetable oil
2 medium cooking onions, diced
3–7 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. ginger powder or 1 inch ginger root, peeled and finely minced
1 tsp. ground turmeric or 1 inch turmeric root, peeled and finely minced
1 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. ground coriander
1 or 2 shakes of chili powder (substitutes for Lisa's peppers)
1 tsp. tomato paste
4 cups (1 box) organic vegetable stock plus 1 cup water (five cups liquid in total)
1 cup red lentils, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup pearl barley, rinsed and drained
1 large 28 oz. can diced tomatoes
4 cups kale, finely chopped
1 bunch cilantro, leaves and stems chopped (about 1 cup)

Instructions
1. Prepare and chop the ingredients. Put the ginger and garlic in one bowl and the dry spices in another.
2. In the Instant Pot, sauté onions with vegetable oil until translucent and starting to brown.
3. Add the garlic and ginger and cook until fragrant (1 to 2 minutes).
4. Add ground turmeric, onion powder, garlic powder, ground coriander and chili powder and stir to cook the spices (about a minute, until fragrant). Use a splash of your stock to loosen the onions from the bottom of the pot.
5. Add tomato paste and stir to coat ingredients.
6. Add the red lentils, pearl barley, and diced tomatoes and stir to break up any clumps of lentils/barley.
7. Add the remaining vegetable broth and water.
8. Add the kale and cilantro
9. Pressure cook on high setting for 15 minutes.
10. Manually release pressure 15 minutes after cooking is done.

Doesn't really need salt and pepper when fresh, but might need it after reheating from the fridge. Add salt and pepper at the table. I just polished off the last of my first batch! Yum.

To your health,

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Jim McDermott: Aargh! You Americans and 'cups.' Big? Medium? Small? Teaspoons are fine—they're fairly precise, so what's wrong with ounces/grams for the other stuff?

Mike replies: We get blamed for everything.

First of all, a cup is eight (8) fluid ounces or 250 milliliters. Two cups in a pint, two pints in a quart.

We got this measurement convention from the English. It came into widespread use in the 1200s, probably because of the natural convenience of its "half and half again" nature. Henry VII instituted it as a standard, and Queen Elizabeth I thrice enforced her grandfather's standard, in which era it became known as the "Imperial" system of weights and measures. It was most likely not used in North America at all in the 13th century, and very little known here in the reign of Henry VII (1485–1509).

So blame the Tudors.

Comments

[hugh crawford]

How does this work for push processing?

[John Krumm]

Sounds good, might have to try it. I do find that boxed veggie stocks taste like carrots, onions and cardboard. I’d be tempted to throw a few extra whole veggies into the pot and just turn 4 cups of water into fresh instant stock.

[Tim Smith]

I like it that you're taking charge of your diet and finding ways to enjoy food and cooking.

I'll pass along a new favorite of mine, heirloom dried beans, specifically as offered online via Rancho Gordo https://www.ranchogordo.com/collections/heirloom-beans

The Alubia Blanca Bean has become one of my favorites and is dead easy to prepare and store. Warm up a cup or two and pair it with your favorite sauteed leafy green and bingo, hot lunch. But they're all delicious and find their way into some of the best eateries in the country.

[Rick in CO]

Mike, for those of us non-Vegans (we are out there!) try this soup using leftover Thanksgiving turkey: https://www.sunset.com › recipe › take-two-turkey-noodle-soup-ginger-chile (Sunset Magazine). Ginger is good for you - right?

[Longviewer]

Looks to be gluten free if the barley is omitted. Thanks!

[Barry Reid]

Sounds a lot like a dhal, if you take out the barley & kale, which I’d definitely do.

IMO Dhal + lightly steamed veg would probably have a slight edge in both health and flavour. As it goes I’d also use fresh Turmeric as it’s way nicer than the dried & ground stuff.

[Jim McDermott]

Aargh! You Americans and 'cups'. Big? Medium? Small? Teaspoons are fine - they're fairly precise, so what's wrong with ounces/grams for the other stuff?

[A cup is 8 fluid ounces or 250 milliliters. Two cups in a pint, two pints in a quart.

We get blamed for everything. We got these measurement conventions from the English. It came into widespread use in the 1200s, probably because of the natural convenience of its "half and half again" nature. Henry VII instituted it as a standard and Queen Elizabeth I thrice enforced her grandfather's standard, at which point it became known as the "Imperial" system of weights and measures. So, please blame the Tudors. --Mike]

[Richard Parkin]

I don’t understand the complaint about ‘cups’, they are widely used here in U.K. and you can buy a set of measures in any supermarket! However two cups don’t make a pint here (nor 4 a quart) as we have 20 fluid ounce pints not your itsy-bitsy titchy 16 oz American ones.

[Maybe he's not from the UK either? --Mike]

[Jim]

This recipe looks delicious... and I've got a batch on cooking right now. I love this kind of OT content coming up on TOP. I switched out the barley for some put lentils and yellow split peas.

But what I'm wondering is, what's the benefit of using a pressure cooker for something like this? The recipe says 15 minutes of pressure cooking plus 15 minutes before you release the pressure, so the lentils are getting 30 minutes of cook time. But the packs for my lentils only specify 40 minutes of cooking if you're doing them in a pan on the hob (hob = stove top in American English, I think).

So is it just to shave 1/4 off the cooking time? For that, you're trading off the convenience of a normal pan, which includes the fact that you could add the kale in later in the cooking time, if you wanted (my batch is still cooking, so only guessing that it might be a bit overdone compared to the lentils).

I can see the point of pressure cooking with tougher cuts of meat that need long cooking conventionally. But not long after I got my Instant Pot, I started eating a lot less meat, so it's not seen very much use. Hence my interest in finding ways it can show benefits - it's a lovely piece of kit, and I feel like it deserves to be used more!