The rains are here and shall be with us for the next couple of months. While I love the rainy season, the wet and cold weather calls for warm comfort and soups are one way to go. Soups are also a great idea for dinner for so many other reasons. They’re a one-dish meal, a lot less work, can be hearty, comforting and satisfying yet light and finally, an excellent way to put the leftovers in the vegetable bin in your fridge, to good use! Have soups piping hot in the cold weather and slightly warm or cold in the summer, whichever way you look at them, they work well.
If you’ve been reading my posts for a while now you will know that I was never quite a fan of soups on the whole and I wasn’t a very good soup maker either. Over the past couple of years both have changed and I do like certain soups quite well, and my soup making skills have improved quite a bit, enough that my daughter was quite pleasantly surprised at how good my soups now taste!
This particular soup was inspired by a soup which I had for a couple of months back at a local café in Goa. My daughter and I had decided to pop in there for lunch and she ordered a thin crust pizza. I decided to order their Three Bean Soup as I wasn’t feeling particularly hungry. When it came to our table it looked a lot like cream of mushroom soup colour wise and what I really liked about it was that they had blended the beans into a smooth creamy soup rather than leaving the beans whole. It wasn’t spicy at all but just wholesome, delicious and somehow very satisfying. It was so good that my daughter, who started out saying she wanted just a taste of my soup to see how it was, ended up finishing half off it in the time it took for her pizza to arrive!
While I have no idea as to what exactly they used in their soup, my daughter and I thought we could taste chickpeas, red kidney beans and probably black eyed beans in it. So I set to work with some chickpeas, black eyed beans and kidney beans and here’s my take on it. While my version wasn’t exactly the same as the soup we had, I thought it came pretty close in taste and texture. It’s gluten-free, vegan and low carb as well.
A Creamy Three Bean Soup
Ingredients
- 2 onions medium , chopped
- 1/2 tsp garlic or garlic minced paste
- 1 tsp ginger minced
- 3/4 cup red kidney beans cooked (Rajma beans)
- 1 cup chickpeas cooked (Kabuli chana)
- 1/2 cup black eyed beans cooked (chowli)
- 1/2 tsp cumin powder
- 3 cups vegetable stock
- 1/2 tsp oregano dried
- to taste Salt pepper and
Instructions
- Heat the oil in a large saucepan and add the chopped onions, ginger and garlic to it. Sautxe9 on medium heat till the onions turn soft and translucent, and the raw small of the onions and garlic disappears.
- Add the cooked beans and chickpeas to the pot, along with the cumin powder and sautxe9 for about 5 minutes. Then add the vegetables stock and some salt, stir and bring to a boil. Let this simmer for about 10 to 15 minutes.
- Take the saucepan off the heat and let it cool. Blend till smooth and return the Soup to the sauce pan. Heat through and add a little water if it is to thick. It should be the consistency of a cream of mushroom soup. Add the oregano and season with a little more salt (if required) and pepper.
- Serve hot, garnished with cream or yogurt or finely chopped almonds with some garlic toast on the side.
I'm Aparna and My Diverse Kitchen is my ovo-lacto vegetarian food blog where you'll find recipes, food stories & photography. I've been blogging since 2007 and believe the kitchen, and the dining table (by extension) is really the heart of a home. 
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