Magic Soup
This would be a lot shorter — and, perhaps, a better read if I just posted a recipe. But, I’d rather add more words to it. Come along if you wish. At the end, you may have a new recipe you like. Maybe more.
My magic soup started as a thought exercise in how to make a vegetable concoction that I’d not only enjoy but would be the most nutritious I could make it, wouldn’t take a lot of effort, would be inexpensive, and would feed me for at least a week. I think I’ve succeeded. I’ve pushed the recipe on family and friends (only checking back on two of them to see if they’ve made it yet) and now I’m subjecting you to it.
In the interest of full disclosure, my aunt did tell me that I didn’t cook it long enough. But, for a little context of that commentary, my aunt still lives in the community in south Georgia where I was born and raised. Most of our vegetables came from the garden in the back yard and the canonized standard for cooking them was flavored by pork and boiled to within a fork tine of disintegration. I think we had something against chewing vegetables. The only other accepted cooking form (green bean casserole excluded) came out for church salad socials. Some other day, I’ll have to tell you of the beautiful one’s first exposure to one of those events.
As I am writing this, we are just a couple weeks into the U.S. coronavirus response. Human nature, being broken as it is, has demonstrated one of its less neighborly traits — hording. If your store shelves are like mine, the same supply chain that provided a maddening overabundance of choice just days ago, is now faltering under the onslaught of the mental frailty and need to contol that drives many to buy all the things — NOW. I’m not a psychologist so I’m not going to express any more thoughts on why this is. But, I mention it because this behavior’s impact did require me to collect the few ingredients for this magic soup over the course of three trips to the grocery store instead of one liesurely trip with my reusable shopping bag (I think the plastic bags are like wire coat hangers. You put them in the closet and turn off the light, next thing you know they are reproducing like rabbits, spilling out all over the floor.).
With that, I guess it would be a good time for the magic soup ingredients list.
As a frame of reference, I buy most of my groceries from Kroger so the sizes listed below are due to what they have in the freezer section. The main exception is the frozen collards — which came from Whole Foods because Kroger didn’t have any when I wanted them and we were visiting our daughter — where there was a Whole Foods and an abundance of collards. So, with three or four bags left in my freezer, I can horde too.
- 1 Crock Pot (or slow cooker of other branding)
- Olive oil (I tend to use Newman’s Own Extra Virgin First Cold Press — for reasons that probably have no bearing on this recipe)
- 2 12 oz bags frozen Broccoli & Cauliflower mix (or 1 12 oz bag of each if you prefer)
- 1 12 oz bag frozen Pepper and Onion Blend
- 1 12 oz (ish) bag frozen Crinkle Cut Carrots
- 1 12 oz bag frozen Brussels Sprouts
- 1 16 oz bag frozen Collards
- 3 14.5 oz cans Kroger Fire Roasted Salsa-Style Diced Tomatoes
This is what it looks like when getting ready to slave over the preparation:
One of the things I appreciate about this experiment/recipe is that ,with a moderately sharp pair of scissors, preparation takes about five minutes — depending on how artistic you want to be in putting the ingredients in the crock.
On that topic, I do layer the ingredients, mostly so I don’t have to stir so much when ladeling it out, but also so that it makes less of a mess for me to clean off the lid.
The first ingredient in the pool is the oil — which I measure meticulously:
Yep, about that much. I tip the bottle a wave it about — not quite covering the bottom. Why? You may ask. Olive oil is good for you. A little in the soup gives it a more pleasing texture.
Then, I put in the Pepper and Onion blend. Not that the crock pot gets hot enough to saute them but, something in the back of my mind says, heat, oil, peppers and onions are a good combination.
Then, just continue to cut open and layer the bags of frozen ingredients. That really doesn’t sound appetizing. But it does sound easy.
At this point (picture above) I have put the oil, pepper/onion blend, one bag of broccoli cauliflower mix and one can of the tomatoes. You can get as crazy as you want in this layering process. I can say that I’ve probably given it more thought than a therapist might consider normal.
There are a couple of pointers I have for layering. Since there are duplicates of most everything except the collards, you may, as I do, want to put them in the middle of the mix. You definitely don’t want to put them in last. They are flakey (when frozen) and some flakes will fly around the kitchen — only to be found when you step on them. When done, they will and will stick to the lid of your crock. Just more cleanup. And, you may not want to add a can of tomatoes last for much the same cleanup reason. Plus you’ll see another reason in a moment.
When you finish layering all of your ingredients, having neglected to put the third can of tomatoes in, as I did this time, put the lid on; set the temperature to low; set cooking time to 6 hours (8 if you prefer) and you’ll see something like this:
Don’t worry, when you come back by in about a couple hours in you will see that it looks like this:
Once the content is cooked down enough, you can add the can of tomatoes you forgot, or just put it in after everything is finished and stir it up well. You could also leave it out and save it for the next batch if you think there is enough liquid in the soup for your liking.
Cleanup is another benefit to this recipe. This is the refuse that remains after preparation:
And that can be compressed further into:
The plastic bag went back into the pantry to reproduce.
And, after six hours and five minutes of slaving over the hot stove and washing the preparation tools, this is the result:
If you give it a try, I hope you enjoy it. If you don’t think you’ll eat it every day and finish it before you have to throw it out, I find it freezes in 2-cup containers very well.
On a side note, there is so much diatribe about vegetables not having complete protein. And, of course, the counter argument of proper pairing of vegetables to get it. That may be too much energy thinking about food on a meal-by-meal basis for me. But I did discover that this mixture has all the essential proteins. Be warned though, if you want to get body-building amounts of protein out of this, you have to eat the entire crock every day (at least if you have about 185 pounds of lean body mass). Even I would decline that.
When I figure out how to include an extract from my spreadsheet on the nutrition content of the magic soup, I’ll come back and update this post. Until then, a 2-cup serving has just under 300 kcal and a 3-cup serving has just under 450 — and all kinds of healthy nutrients.
I encourage you to look up the nutrition values if you are interested. There will be variations depending on where you find the information and how precisely you fill your bowl. I don’t recommend getting carried away with it — it can be a deep rabbit hole.
Otherwise, enjoy a tasty bowl of inexpensive, easily prepared, nutritious soup.
