Food and Cooking

anything with beans/lentils really. i like Pasulj, Turkish lentil soup, and ful medame. these are all easy to prepare, cheap, and filling. you can also deviate from standard recipes by throwing other veggies into the mix (within reason). they also work very well with some soft boiled eggs and hot sauce.

Not exactly soup, but congee (rice porridge) is great for filling your belly and it's very easy to make.
I guess you could make it watery enough to pour it out of a thermos if necessary.

Gazpacho. Throw whatever veggies you have in a blender, season and bam - soup. Add a filler if it doesn't keep you full. Beans, lentils, potatoes, rice are all good options.

Bean & vegetable soup. Easy to change up the beans used, and to vary the vegetables over the seasons, as well as whatever herbs & spices you like. Useful if the supermarket discounts things at the end of the day, or if they don't always have everything in stock, as you can adapt it on the fly.

Scotch broth - mix of lentils & soup barley, usually with a small amount of carrot & cabbage, but you could use any vegetable. Useful if you forgot to start soaking your beans or pulses on time, as it barely requires soaking.

Alternatively you could make an extremely strong vegetable stock, freeze that as icecube-sized amounts, then pop a couple in a pan, add water to dilute to the strength of regular stock & simmer the rest of your ingredients in that. Making the stock would take a fair bit of time as you'd have to reduce it so much, but then you'd be set up for much shorter weekly soup-making sessions. Issue here is, if you're not totally happy with a batch of stock, you're stuck with it for a lot longer than a batch of soup.

I second the taco soup. I call it tortilla soup and do it a little differently, as they stated. It is really simple and really quite delicious.

I make it with a whole chicken which is fairly cheap, in a slow cooker, hard to mess up. But just the other night i made it with some plain chicken breasts i picked up that day. Butterfly cut them seared them off and finished them in the soup.

Three or four cups of Chicken stock.

I omit the taco seasoning and just use healthy amount of cumin and a little chili powder. Salt (depending on salt content of chicken stock), pepper, garlic powder.

Cans of corn, black beans, garbanzo beans, roasted tomato.

I recently started sauteeing a heap of mushrooms chopped to bits and adding that too.

Finish with a squirt of lime, some cheese, and tortilla chips, or i sometimes crisp up some regular corn tortillas and cut them up in it.

Super simple, tasty. I personally can eat it throughout the week.

Spanish lentils soup.

Fry some onion, garlic and chorizo (you can fry it directly in the pot with some olive oil).

Add water, lentils, potatoes, tomatoes, bay leaf, salt.

Cook.

Eat.

Delicious. It's maybe 15 minutes of chopping and hour or two of cooking. If you have some pressure cooker it's fast and easy. Without it it takes longer but it's still really easy, just stir from time to time. Try it once to figure out the proportions but it's hard to mess up.

I'm a fan of taco soup. Plenty of recipes out there to find one that works for you. The gist is some stock, beans, tomatoes, green peppers, ground beef, and taco seasoning mix. You can add some onions, or cheese, or sour cream, or crushed taco chips (stale works great), or some extra spice from peppers... basically anything goes.

Could make pasta sauces, like bolognese, and freeze them, then make some pasta when you want it, like 9-8 minutes. Could also pre cook the pasta although I’ve never be a fan of reheated pasta. Hell, maybe could make a pasta dish and freeze the whole thing. Not exactly a soup, but i suspect pasta and pasta sauce evolved from soup.

Onion & carrots, anywhere from 1:2 to 1:1 by weight, boil in just enough water to cover, grate in some fresh ginger, salt, puree. Add more water if it's too thick. Throw in some chicken bouillon if you like.

I've been digging this bean soup lately. I know it seems a bit intimidating looking to the ingredient list, but if you don't have something skip it. It'll be fine, the beans, broth and greens are the star of the show here. And don't stress about what kind of or how much greens, I've used collared greens, spinach and kale. Just tear them into thumbnail size pieces and toss it in, simmer till soft. They should be the last thing you add except for the totally optional lemon juice. I e never once made this recipe with basil or ginger and it's still good AF with a good leftover quality. An easy recipe that's hard fuck up. Enjoy

Bright with lemon and herbs, and packed with hearty greens, this highly adaptable soup can be either light and brothy or thick and stewlike, depending on your preference. Smashing some of the beans to release their starch will give you a thicker soup that’s almost worthy of a fork. To keep it on the brothy side, add a little more liquid and leave the beans intact. Either way, it’s a warming, piquant, one-pot meal that’s perfect for winter.

INGREDIENTS

Yield: 4 servings

3tablespoons olive oil

1large onion, diced

1large carrot, diced

1bunch sturdy greens, such as kale, broccoli rabe, mustard greens or collard greens

1tablespoon tomato paste

¾teaspoon ground cumin, plus more to taste

⅛teaspoon red-pepper flakes, plus more to taste

½pound ground turkey

3garlic cloves, minced

1tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger

1teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste

1quart chicken stock

2(15-ounce) cans white beans, drained and rinsed

1cup chopped fresh, soft herbs, such as parsley, mint, dill, basil, tarragon, chives or a combination

Fresh lemon juice, to taste

PREPARATION Step 1 Heat a large pot over medium-high for a minute or so to warm it up. Add the oil and heat until it thins out, about 30 seconds. Add onion and carrot, and sauté until very soft and brown at the edges, 7 to 10 minutes.

Step 2 Meanwhile, rinse the greens and pull the leaves off the stems. Tear or chop into bite-size pieces and set aside.

Step 3 When the onion is golden, add tomato paste, ¾ teaspoon cumin and ⅛ teaspoon red-pepper flakes to the pot, and sauté until paste darkens, about 1 minute. Add turkey, garlic, ginger and 1 teaspoon salt, and sauté, breaking up the meat with your spoon, until turkey is browned in spots, 4 to 7 minutes.

Step 4 Add stock and beans, and bring to a simmer. Let simmer until the soup is thick and flavorful, adding more salt if needed, 15 to 25 minutes. If you like a thicker broth, you can smash some of the beans with the back of the spoon to release their starch. Or leave the beans whole for a brothier soup.

Step 5 Add the greens to the pot and simmer until they are very soft. This will take 5 to 10 minutes for most greens, but tough collard greens might take 15 minutes. (Add a little water if the broth gets too reduced.)

Step 6 Stir herbs and lemon juice into the pot, taste and add more salt, cumin and lemon until the broth is lively and bright-tasting. Serve topped with a drizzle of olive oil and more red-pepper flakes, if desired.

I quite enjoy this one.

The sausage might not make it terribly cheap though.