by Rev. Chef Beth Love
This soup is the perfect meal on a cold winter day or anytime you need a comforting, brothy warm-up! And believe it or not, by using quick prep ingredients and a high cooking temperature, you can whip this delightful dish up in a jiffy!
The mushrooms in the pictured soup are maitake, but you can use any type of mushroom.
Yield:
About 10 cups
Ingredients:
- 8 cups vegetable stock
- 2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger, or more to taste
- ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes, or more to taste
- 1–2 teaspoons tamarind paste or puree, or more to taste
- ½ pound tofu, cut into cubes or small triangles
- ½ pound fresh mushrooms of your choice
- 2 small carrots, sliced thinly on the diagonal
- ¾ cup shelled edamame
- ⅓ cup instant wakame seaweed
- 1 red bell pepper, cut in strips
- ¼–½ cup fresh cilantro leaves and tender stems, chopped, or more for garnish
- 1–2 green onions, sliced, optional, or more for garnish
Directions:
- Bring stock to a boil in a large pot.
- Add ginger, red pepper flakes, tamarind, and tofu.
- Boil for a couple of minutes, then add mushrooms, carrots, and wakame.
- After a minute or two, add red bell pepper and cook for about 30 seconds.
- Remove from heat and mix in cilantro and green onions.
- Serve in bowls, and pass extra cilantro and green onions if you like.
Notes, Substitutions, and Variations:
- This soup comes together very quickly, and can be done even more quickly if you estimate quantities instead of measuring. At Tastes Like Love, we call this “Throw Togethers.” Another Throw Together tip is to start the stock heating before prepping the other ingredients, and prep in the order in which ingredients will be added.
- Instant wakame may go by other names. It’s wakame that has been cooked, chopped, and dried. Rather than the tough, long pieces of whole wakame that can take a bit of time to soak and cook, instant wakame cooks in just two or three minutes. It is very shriveled when dry, and will grow considerably in the soup.
- This soup is free of added salt, oil, and sugar. If your taste buds are used to more salty food and you are tempted to add salt, I suggest you instead let people add miso to taste to individual portions at the table. That way you will need less sodium to get the same level of flavor and will also be adding probiotics to your soup. Note: do not heat miso as that destroys the probiotics in the miso.
- You can add other veggies such as celery, sweet potatoes, leeks, cauliflower, etc, or use alternate vegetables instead of some in the recipe. If using other veggies, stagger the times you add them to the pot, putting in those that take the longest first, then adding the others in turn. Cook until not quite done, as the heat will continue cooking the veggies after you take the pot off the heat.
- To make this into a more hearty meal, put a scoop of cooked grain into the bowls before adding the soup.
- A sprinkle of brown or black sesame seeds on top makes a nice addition.