Today’s healthy homemade soup comes from the book The Food You Crave: Luscious Recipes for a Healthy Life
This soup is truly unlike anything I’ve ever eaten or made. It’s just so unique! But it’s still simple; honestly, you probably have most of the ingredients to make it on hand already.
Sweet and Spicy Peanut Soup
Ingredients (Serves 6-8, depending on how hungry you are)
1 tbsp canola oil
1 cup diced onion (two medium onions)
1 cup diced red bell pepper (one medium pepper)
1 cup diced carrots (two carrots)
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp peeled and grated fresh ginger
2 cups sweet potato, peeled and cubed (one large sweet potato)
6 cups low-sodium chicken broth or vegetable broth
One 14.5-ounce can no-salt-added diced tomatoes, with their juices
2/3 cup creamy natural peanut butter (this is why I bought that Smucker’s!)
2 tsp honey
1/2 cup chopped scallion greens (Don’t neglect these! They cost like $1 and, like she writes, “add an essential zingy freshness and crunch.” It’s true.)
Method
Heat the oil in a large soup pot over medium-high heat. Add the onion, bell pepper, and carrots.
Cook, stirring, until the vegetables are soft, about five minutes. Add the cayenne, black pepper, garlic, and ginger, and cook for another minute.
Stir in the sweet potato, broth, and tomatoes and bring to a boil.
Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer until the potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes. Then break out the immersion blender!
If you don’t have one, transfer the soup to a blender (in two batches) and puree. Return it to the pot. Add the peanut butter and honey.
Stir, over low heat, until the peanut butter melts. The recipe makes, to be frank, a shit-ton of soup. The first thing I did was separate two-cup portions out to freeze.
I’m so excited that weeks or even months from now, I can just defrost two servings at a time and be set for soup for the week!
When you’re ready to eat, sprinkle with salt (you don’t use any when cooking, so it needs a little), top with the scallions and enjoy!
I thought it was going to taste really Asian (ginger, carrots) or at really pumpkiny (because it’s orange). It’s not quite either. The soup actually has African origins, but the best word to describe it is “exotic.” It’s spiced without being spicy, and not as sweet as I expected. There’s just a hint of the ginger, which I like–sometimes ginger just overwhelms recipes! Peanut is probably the most distinct flavor (you definitely don’t taste the sweet potatoes or tomatoes), but it’s just so different from peanut butter or even peanuts. That Smucker’s was perfect for a recipe like this.
Because I didn’t know what it would taste like, I didn’t know what to plan to eat it with. I had it with a mini bagel roast beef sandwich and crudites, which is a really lame thing to eat with a soup like this! Next time I would have it with naan and hummus, teriyaki chicken or salmon, or baked marinated tofu.
The soup is a good source of healthy fats, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, lycopene, and potassium. Once it’s pureed, you forget how many healthy things are hiding out in there! (The ginger and Vitamin C make me think it’s going to be my new BFF when flu season hits.) I love how by using a blender, you can make a soup incredibly creamy without adding any milk. Even though there’s no meat (and you can use vegetable broth to make it truly vegetarian) it has plenty of protein. That, plus the fat and fiber, will keep you very satisfied! One cup has 190 calories, 12 grams fat (2 grams saturated), 9 grams protein, 15 grams carbs, and 3 grams fiber. You can definitely have a cup and a half and feel good about it!
I want to make this for a little dinner party to share with friends. I imagine it would be amazing with good beer or wine. Even though it’s simple and healthy, it feels grown-up and special. Plus I love giving people something to eat that they’ve most likely never tried–but will totally love!
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