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A New Gadget – Morphy Richards Soup Maker

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I’ve talked about soups several times in the past.

Problem with making soups at home? Time, energy and effort.

And while some of my friends, who happen to be very talented cooks, will probably laugh at me (I can practically hear them now), I like throwing technology at problems.

So when I came across the Morphy Richards Soup Maker for sale in a shop nearby I simply had to have one.

The soup maker takes a lot of the pain and hassle out of making soup. You simply chop up the ingredients, chuck them into the “kettle”, add seasoning, stock (if you’re using it) and water and switch it on. Depending on the settings you’ll have a nice freshly made soup about 20 minutes later.

Simple.

I like simple. Simple makes me happy!

Here’s a video from Morphy Richards which explains how it works:

Admittedly I haven’t had a chance to use the machine much yet. So far I’ve made one simple, yet tasty, vegetable soup with it.

The machine ships with an instruction booklet which includes a limited number of recipes. I suspect that most “normal” soup recipes will work out fine with it, but I’ll have to experiment to be sure.

Getting the quantity of liquid right I suspect is going to be a challenge. Personally I really don’t like watery soups!

 

Exploring Different Flavour Soups

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While I’d love to be able to make my own soup every single day it’s not going to happen just yet ..

Even a “simple” soup requires preparation time and I haven’t quite got to that stage yet.

So for the moment I try to keep it “interesting” by choosing as wide a variety of soup flavours as possible.

Today for example I had a very tasty, although a bit salty, split pea soup.

split pea soup

I think I picked it up in my local Tesco or SuperQuinn. To be frank I’m not sure, as it’s a tin, so it’s probably been sitting in my cupboard for a couple of months

 

First Attempts at Homemade Soup

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I’ve been meaning to make my own soups for some time, as I really don’t want to be buying things I can make myself.

While a lot of the “healthy” soups out there are pretty good, they’re still going to have more salt in them than I really need.

So yesterday I finally got round to making a spicy lentil soup so that I could bring it into work today for my lunch. But I first needed to get some kind of container for transporting the end product. I’ve got plenty of containers for dry food and even salads, but I didn’t have anything that would work for soup.

Luckily I was able to pick up a Stanley Classic Vacuum food jar in my local Tesco. I compared their prices against a couple of online outlets and there wasn’t much in it – I might have saved myself 1 or 2 Euro, but not much more, by buying online.

Stanley food jar

 

A “food jar” is essentially the same concept as a flask, except it’s designed for food. While a flask will have a fairly narrow opening the “food jar” has a much broader one and with about a 1/2 litre capacity it can hold a single serving of soup, stew or chilli sauce.

stanley-food-jar-open

 

If you’re not going into an office which might have bowls etc, the jar’s lid can double as a bowl.

The first soup I made was based on a “spiced carrot and lentil soup” recipe from BBC GoodFood

Most of the recipes I’ve come across for spiced soup assume you’re using dry herbs, whereas I generally cook with fresh chillies, so my soup was a tad spicier than I’d have liked, though still edible.

lentil-soup

I’m not sure what other recipes to try out, but I suspect most of them will be biased towards vegetable / vegetarian recipes and away from meat. I’m not going to give up eating meat, but I suspect I’ll be cutting back my intake (more on that anon)

 

Heinz Tomato Soup With “Twist of Chilli”

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twist-of-chilliSince I’m back eating soup for lunch again I’ve been trying out different brands and flavours.

Heinz are currently offering “special edition” soups. I’m not sure what the logic behind them is, though I assume it’s some way of rationalising their rather inflated price. Fortunately they were on “special” at the weekend, so the price was closer to the one you’d pay for a can of soup. (I never thought I’d be so fixated on the pricing of soups .. )

I’m not sure how many flavours they’re offering in this “range”, but I like spicy food, so the tomato soup with “a twist of chilli” caught my eye.

It’s not that spicy, but there’s definitely a small “kick”.

Calorie wise a 400g tin “weighs in” at about 236 calories. Preparation is simple – about 3 minutes in the microwave (obviously you take it out of the metal tin and heat it in a non-metallic bowl or other container, unless you like the idea of exploding microwaves!)

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Tasty Exotic Irish Soup From Fusion And Street

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I love trying out new things and so when I saw Fusion and Street‘s soups for sale at the weekend I picked up a couple.

Today I had their chicken soup and it was fantastic. Of course it’s not a “normal” chicken soup, it’s marketed as “A taste of Mumbai – chicken soup – garam masala spices and basmati rice”

It’s Irish made by a company in Kilkenny, which is just down the road from where I’m based.

Fusion street chicken mumbai soupCost-wise it’s about the same as most of the other soups in that category, so pricewise it isn’t an issue

In terms of calories it’s pretty “light” a 400g pack, which is one bowl, weighs in at about 364 calories

At the moment they have four different flavours:

  • A taste of Marrakech – vegetable soup with lentils
  • A taste of Bangkok –  chicken soup with Thai spices , jasmine rice and fresh lime
  • A taste of Mexico City – tomato soup with fresh coriander, red beans and corn
  • A taste of Mumbai – the chicken soup I mentioned

It’s available in most Tesco supermarkets in Ireland at the moment

 

Cooking Experiments With Kale

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washed kaleJames cooked a very tasty variation on this recipe the other evening. (He added some boiled sausage .. )

So I ended up with quite a bit of kale..

Kale is incredibly healthy and packed full of nutrients. Some people call it a “super food”, but it wasn’t something that I was that familiar with until recently. (Spot a trend? Yes – I’m learning about food!)

Last night I wanted to cook something using kale and as many vegetables as possible. I ended up doing a bit of an experiment with what I had in the kitchen:

  • shallots
  • garlic (not crushed – whole)
  • kale – plenty of it
  • mushrooms
  • red pepper
  • courgette
  • carrot
  • chicken breast (I had some in the freezer)
  • a couple of slivers of ginger
  • dash of wine
  • vegetable stock made from a stock cube and hot water ie. not homemade because I don’t know how!
  • herbs – both fresh from my mini-garden and dried

Kale dinner cooking

Once the stock was added I just let it cook away for about another 20 to 30 minutes until the kale reduced down which led to this:

Kale with vegetables and chicken

I’ve no idea what you’d call this, but it was very tasty 🙂

I’ve also got no idea about the calories etc., but it’s basically loads of vegetables with chicken breast, so it’s probably quite healthy..