Tuesday, August 19, 2008

5 minute quinoa veggie soup

Everytime I roast a chicken or cook any chicken cuts with bones, I make homemade bone broth. I have 2 quart- and 6 pint-sized jars of stock in my freezer currently. And a chicken carcass in the fridge waiting to be turned into broth (should yield roughly 3 quarts, total). I put bone broth in everything I can, since it is such an easily assimilated source of calcium, gelatin and protein. It's great for healing a damaged gut, as well. Therefore, at any given moment, I have soup ingredients on hand. The other day, the kids were hungry and ready to mutiny. I felt like I had "nothing" in the house for lunch (translation: no left overs, or anything easy or ready-made). I pulled a jar of bone broth, grabbed some veggies & quinoa flakes and we had a lunch in 5 minutes.

INGREDIENTS:
  • 1 pint of bone broth
  • veggies - we had broccoli & cauliflower
  • sea salt
  • coconut oil
  • 1/2 cup quinoa flakes
  • juice of 1/2 lime
  • fresh cilantro
  • fresh minced ginger, about 1 tsp
  • thinly sliced onion stalks
  • coconut milk, a few tsps in each bowl
DIRECTIONS:
  1. in a saute pan, saute ginger & veggies in coconut oil with sea salt.
  2. add bone broth, bring to boil.
  3. add cilantro leaves and steams.
  4. add quinoa flakes, turn down heat and simmer for several minutes - quinoa will thicken.
  5. add sliced onion stalks.
  6. remove from heat and allow to cool.
  7. pour in a little bit of coconut milk into each bowl and stir.
Yield: lunch for two hungry kiddos and their mama. obviously, very easy to double, triple, etc.

ALTERNATIVES:
  • try onions or other aromatics in addition to or in place of ginger.
  • add chicken meat.
  • use pre-cooked grains (buckwheat, quinoa, millet, rice, etc) instaed of quinoa flakes.
  • use pre-cooked rice noodles instead of quinoa flakes.
  • try various veggie combinations.
  • spice it up with cayenne pepper or minced hot peppers.

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