My love for ramen started with the famously unhealthy instant noodles that you can get for ā¬0.50 a package in most (Asian) supermarkets. Yummy but soooo incredibly unhealthy! It contains loads of salt, and also a lot of saturated and trans fats. Did you know that the noodles in those packages are fried, and not dried to preserve them?! I used to have no idea, and enjoyed a simple noodle soup once a week or so as an easy and tasty snack, until I found out. Well, no more instant noodles for me!
If you are not a conventional beetroot lover, this recipe is for you! A few weeks ago, I realized I had a jar of beets in my cupboard that was about to go bad. I normally don’t love the extremely earthy taste of red beets, but I also hate wasting food, so I decided I had to make something with them anyway. I first made a pizza (with a delicious crispy crust š) topped with beets, goats cheese, caramelized red onion, thyme and pine nuts. Delicious for sure, but I could still very much taste the earthy flavor of the beets. So, with the other beets, I decided to make something else: a curried beet soup! With this, you can barely taste the beets at all, since the curry spices are such a dominant flavor.
As promised, today I present to you one of my favorite to-go lunches/dinners: Instant Noodle Soup! Whaaaa!! It’s a dream come true, or at least for me. I used to love instant noodle soup when I was younger, it was salty, it was warm and it was super quick — no prepping or cutting of vegetables involved, just pouring in boiling water and wait 3 minutes (which was the hardest part!) and then you’d have this delicious bowl of salty soup with teeny tiny chunks of veggies and lots of noodles.
Of course, that’s not really healthy, and most of those instant noodle soups have extremely high sodium levels and actually little ingredients that were nutritious or had any significant value of vitamins and minerals.
Most bouillon powders or stock cubes are chock full of additives, flavor enhancers, sugar, salt and other weird things that you don’t actually need. Although using stock cubes is an easy way to e.g. give your soups extra flavor, it can also give you all those things that you would probably prefer not to ingest. Therefore I went on an experimental journey, to see if I could make a powder as an alternative for stock cubes!
I know there are already two pumpkin soup recipes up on That Healthy Kitchen (this simple spicy one with chickpeas and this creamy one with coconut milk) and now I would like to add yet another one to my ever growing list of recipes: Pumpkin Soup with Harissa and Orange.
To those of you that don’t know what Harissa is, don’t worry, until two yearsĀ ago I didn’t know either, but now I adore it! Harissa is a North-African/Middle Eastern sauce made from roasted bell peppers, red chillies, garlic and spices. Basically it is just Sriracha sauce, African/Middle Eastern style. Ever since I saw this recipe fromĀ Tieghan from Half Baked Harvest I’ve been wanting to make it at home too, but sometimes our “to-make wish list” just gets too long. I’m guessing basically everybody with Pinterest has that nowadays lol #toomuchinspiration
With my trip to Thailand in mind, I recently started to look more into Asian style food and recipes, because I’m actually not that familiar with the Asian kitchen! Yes, I love sushi and I’ve made some Indian curries a long time ago, but other than that I’m absolutely clueless on which spices to use, what herbs, what produce, what kinds of cooking methods, etc etc.
With winter approaching, I prefer easy, cosy dinners that are warming, delicious and nutritious. And what is more cosy and simple than soup?!
Admittedly, this Creamy Red Lentil and Coconut SoupĀ isn’t theĀ quickest (check out this tomato soup if you want a quick soup), but it is very budget friendly and perfectly spiced.
