Quick Bean and Vegetable Chowder

For the 6 of you who read my last post on the flu shot - please disregard. I wonder why my doc said all that he did, because I'm perfectly fine, not even sore in the injection site like I usually am.

Now, on to the recipe!

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Another entry in the Best Soup competition. :)

This is another one from the McDougall Program for a Healthy Heart book, and it's also posted on the McDougall website in the Recipes section:

Quick Bean and Vegetable Chowder
SERVINGS: 4
PREPARATION TIME: 10 MINUTES
COOKING TIME: 1 HOUR

1 cup Quick Bean Mixture
(recipe follows)
4 cups vegetable broth or water
1 leek, thinly sliced
1 cup frozen diced hash brown potatoes
1/2 cup frozen corn kernels
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon rubbed sage

Combine all ingredients in a medium soup pot. Mix well, cover, bring
to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

Quick Bean Mixture
1 cup split green peas
1 cup barley
1 cup split yellow peas
1 cup orzo pasta (or other small pasta)
1 cup brown lentils
1 cup red lentils

Combine well. Store in-a covered jar.

First off, I had to get the Quick Bean Mixture together.
Do I have a container to put it in? Nope. So off to the stores to find one. It took 3 different stores to find something appropriate, and I wound up with one that looks very similar to this one:

Those grey lines around the edges are either rubber or silicone and they keep out moisture, critters, and even air.

Now to gather the stuff that goes inside of it.

Go through the pantry and yes, I have all the ingredients and bring them into the kitchen so I can start measuring and mixing. Hmm, the bag that's holding the barley feels a little tacky. I've been mostly gluten free for a number of years now and haven't used barley in any recipe all this time, so I check the expiration date on the bag. 2015?? Yikes! Out it goes. And on barley goes to my grocery list.

Why is it so hard to find something that's such a staple as barley? None in Whole Foods, none in 3 local grocery stores, none in the local health food store. What's going on? I find a few bags in another grocery store the next city over, but it's store brand and nearing its expiration date, so I skip it. Eventually I find the boxes of Quaker brand barley mixed in with boxes of instant rice in another store. They're dated 2021, so it's not like it's been languishing there for years, so I grab one. Looks like when this is near the end I'll be adding it to a VitaCost or Amazon order.

Now that I have all the ingredients I take the time to measure and mix. Once again I use the Tinkyada small shells for the "small pasta" called for in the recipe. I also add a half cup of black lentils, only because I have a lot of them and one bag is nearing its expiration date.

The recipe says it makes only 4 servings, and experience has taught me that that means it's not going to make enough for us to have seconds if we want it, so I'm doubling the recipe. If there are any leftovers, I'm sure they'll taste even better the next time around.

No leeks. I thought I had another bag of them already washed and cut in the freezer but can't find them. I'll use onions instead.

I'm using a mix of water and broth, only because I have 2 cups of broth in the refrigerator leftover from a meal I made over the weekend, and none of the other meals this week call for 2 cups of broth.

And instead of putting it all in a pot on the stove, I'm dumping it all into the Instant Pot and setting it on Manual for 12 minutes. That's how long I cook a lot of recipes that are primarily lentils and they come out fine.

When it was all cooked, the soup came up to the 3 quart line in the Instant Pot. We each had 2 decent sized bowls and there's some in the refrigerator to lunch later this week.

My husband said it was perfect the way it was, but I felt it could have used a bit of salt when I first started eating it, but by the end of the first bowl I didn't even think of it any more. The taste was nice and rich, like a very hearty barley mushroom soup. The tiny pasta just melted right into the soup, making a nice thick broth. Mmmmm, mmmmm good! That's what McDougall soups are, mmmmmm, mmmmm good!

As I said in the beginning of this post, another one in the Best Soup category. This one will also be added to the rotation!

Winter weather isn't going to get me down this year!