This is my chilli non carne soup, which is a real winter warmer.
It's so delicious. Loads of veggies in there.
Beans, rice, the butternut pumpkin.
That lovely hum of the sweet, smoky paprika.
It's a goodie,
plus you got the nice crunchy bits of tortilla to enjoy with it.
Happy days.
Get yourself a nice casserole pan. On a medium high heat.
We're going to start with this, the butternut pumpkin.
Take the end off and just cut down the length of the pumpkin.
Let's scoop out the seeds.
Slice into little chunks like this.
I want to get 2 onions, 2 cloves of garlic.
Slice up the garlic as thin as you can,
and then finely slice the red onion.
Let's just go in with a little drizzle of olive oil.
I'm going to go in with the garlic first.
And while that's frying, I'm going to take two chillies now.
If your chillies are hot, just use one.
But these are kind of sweet and mild.
I'm just going to finely slice these chillies.
The seeds are quite hot.
So by removing them, it just allows you to celebrate the flavour
more than the heat.
So already the smells are great.
I'm going to use coriander.
Coriander stalks are very, very delicious.
I'm just going to finally slice these,
keep the leaves, sprinkling over later.
These stalks here, I'll put in with the chilli.
Then we can go in with our onions.
So if you just sweat off the onions nicely for like 5 - 10 minutes,
you're going to get big flavour, a sweetness,
and it's going to kind of just bring all the flavours together.
Really, really nice.
Now, with the butternut pumpkin,
you might be thinking the skin was left on here.
It's delicious and it's outrageously sweet,
almost like candy sweet.
So the whole lot is going in the pan now, right.
The last thing I want to do to flavour this,
because we've taken the meat out is a brilliant little spice.
This is smoked paprika.
One heaped teaspoon goes in.
That smokiness is kind of what you get from it,
and that will make a massive difference.
I have 10 - 15 minutes of moving the veggies around
because that's going to intensify every single bit of flavour, right.
If we just throw the wet stuff
in, it's just going to be boiled stuff.
We don't want boiled stuff.
We want an amazing, rich, comforting soup
So, look, we've had just over 10 minutes.
You can see the caramelisation in here.
And you can hear that it's frying.
And let's add the next ingredients.
Let's talk about healthier swaps.
First up, mixed beans.
You just get way more variety.
And it's a brilliant source of fiber.
So go in to the pan with the beans and then two tins of water.
I'm going to add some tomatoes.
So you can crush those through your hands.
If you're kind of rugged and rustic like me, or you can just put
or you can just mash 'em in, whatever you like.
So another little swap is swapping white rice for brown rice.
Okay.
So you're going to get more fiber
You actually get more flavor, which is really, really good.
We want 150 grams,
and you can let this sort of simmer quite fast for about 20 minutes.
Now, the last job I want to do before I chill out
is do some crispy little tortillas.
So another healthier swap is going from the white tortilla
to the whole wheat one. I love these.
They have much more flavour as well.
Tear up the tortillas.
Spread them out on a tray
and I'm going to
put these into the oven just for like 5 - 10 minutes
or until golden.
And now I can just chill out.
So the soup has had about 20 minutes.
The rice is cooked.
Smells exceptional, right. Tortillas.
So these have been about 10 minutes
to kind of get crunchy and delicious.
Beautiful. So soup. It's quite chunky.
And some people love that.
You can go pureed if you want, but that's not where I want to go.
I want a bit of half
and half. So get a potato masher and give it a ruddy good mashing.
And it's going to give it a much creamier texture,
make it more delicious. More intense.
Get some of that coriander and tear it through.
That, my friends, I'm very, very happy with.
So we've got a load of food there. It's incredibly affordable.
It's very, very nutritious.
It's a really comforting dish.
Got some of the tortilla chunks in there.
If you want a bit of yogurt, I like it.
And then if you want
just a little bit of grated cheese, just a tiny little bit
and it is delicious and a bit of coriander to garnish.
And that, my friends, is a beautiful beautiful soup.
Chilli non carne.
Butternut pumpkin, veggies, beans.
That smoky, smoky paprika.
Delicious.
A proper big bowl of tasty soup.
Let's have a try.
Big flavours.
Really nice. Comforting. Makes me really, really happy.
It's like a big old hug and it's really affordable.
So that, my friends, is definitely something you want to try.