Soup is a winter time favorite in this house, but we also enjoy it in the summer. I make a large pot for Shabbat and then the leftovers are consumed over the week. Throw in a salad or a sandwich and you have a full meal. I’m always on the look out for new soups that incorporate large amounts of vegetables and proteins. The dumplings in this soup from Chic Made Simple, are especially enticing as they turn a bowl of soup into a filling meal on its own.
This soup is not short on vegetables!
Soup:
garlic, oil, onion, leeks, zucchini, fresh pumpkin OR butternut squash (I used butternut squash), carrots, sweet potato, tomato, potatoes, chicken stock, salt, black pepper
Dumplings:
flour, salt, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, baking powder, eggs, chicken stock, oil
The Process:
Roasted garlic
First, I roasted the garlic by roasting it uncovered in a preheated oven. This filled the house with a delicious aroma and I wished I had made some extra garlic to spread on bread and eat. While this was going on, I did all the peeling, chopping and slicing that must take place before I could actually begin cooking. Then, I sautéed the onion and the leeks, added in the rest of the vegetables and covered them in 1 inch of stock. This simmered for an hour and a half during which I prepared the dumplings.
Simmering soup
I made the dumplings by mixing the wet and dry ingredients separately and then combining the two. The mixture sat for 1-2 minutes to firm up. The total process took ten minutes.
Once the vegetables were fully cooked, I added the garlic and pureed everything with an immersion blender. I then brought the soup to a boil and dropped the dumpling mix into the soup 1 tablespoon at a time. This cooked for 7-8 minutes. I stirred to prevent the dumplings from sticking. Everything simmered 30 minutes longer.
Dropping in the dumplings
The Results:
There was a lot of vegetable prep, which took more time than anticipated, but it was worth it to have so many vegetables in the soup. The actual cooking was easy, but the soup does simmer for several hours requiring someone to watch over it. I also found the immersion blender crucial as you will otherwise have a very chunky soup and it is not practical to pour it all into a regular blender. The dumplings were easy to make but stirring was essential to keep them from sticking together.
The soup tasted delicious, but it was darker and murkier than that soup shown in the cookbook photo. The photo has a clear, orange tinted soup with dumplings floating in it. The soup I made was yellow tinged and you could not see through it. It coated the dumplings. The dumplings themselves were so delicious that I have made them for other soups, with the same great results. The pot of soup is large and can easily feed a family.
The fully cooked pot of vegetable dumpling soup
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