In the soup

Another new toy – a Cuisinart Soup Maker.

I eat a lot of soup, working from home, as it makes a quick and (usually) healthy lunch. However, although I have plenty of practice in making soup, lately I seem to be eating more shop-bought soup than homemade. Which generally means more salt, more fat and more additives.

My problem is that although I find soupmaking easy enough, the bit I find frustrating is waiting for the soup to cool enough to put through my blender, and then having to heat it up again to eat. Last year, I managed to break the goblet of my blender in my impatience; I have been more careful since, but I do find the cooling/reheating stage a chore.

So I have been looking at this gadget for a while, and decided to get one yesterday. I was in Lakeland, buying loaf tins, and they had it on special offer with a free electric pepper/spice grinder.

It is one-pot cooking, the kind I enjoy. To explain how it works, I’ll take you through the steps of the pea and ham soup I just made, and am drinking as I write this.

1. Turn soup maker on. Set timer to 25 mins and temperature to high. Add a spoon of oil.

2. After 30 secs, add some pancetta, which starts to fry on the hotplate at the bottom of the goblet.

3. After 2 minutes, add a chopped onion and leek. Press ”stir” button, and let them soften.

4. After 5 minutes, add frozen peas, garlic (if required), water/stock, salt and pepper.

5. Leave on high until it comes to a boil, then switch to simmer.

6. When alarm sounds after 25 minutes, the soup is cooked. Then switch to blend mode for 2 minutes.

Hey presto, pea and ham soup in 30 minutes, including preparation of ingredients. Furthermore, it is delicious.

The soup maker makes 4 good portions of soup – of course, it is easy to reheat by turning on the heat again. Although, I might restart my frozen soup collection!

Cleaning is easy too. A couple of cups of water, and a squirt of washing up liquid, a minute or so on heat, and then pulse. Rinse out thoroughly, and allow to drain.

Also, the recipe book is available as a pdf, so I have it loaded on my Nexus, for easy reference.