Rice Soup Recipe: Simple Vegetable Rice Soup
Long ago, when people lived simpler lives, lunch hardly ever consisted of three courses plus dessert. Most people didn't eat meat every day, and the main food was hot, hearty soups, pottages and borscht. They provided enough calories and nutrients (which nobody had even heard of back then), and they were easy to make in whatever quantity was needed.
But times have changed, and for many people rice soup has become more of a tradition than an essential part of lunch. Nutritionists even say that soup is no longer necessary in an everyday diet, arguing that if you regularly eat raw and cooked vegetables, you can do without it. What they don't mention is that soup is always delicious. Besides, I remember from childhood: if you're sick, you need a bowl of homemade chicken soup.
Apart from chicken noodle soup, I really love plain rice soup. The simplest one there is. Not even with meat. Just soup. It's always tasty, you never get tired of it, and it takes only half an hour to make, which matters a lot in the morning, especially on workdays. It's a pity that so many people skip a good breakfast in favor of a cup of coffee and a cigarette or, even more alarming, a stop at a fast-food place on the way.
When I was a kid, the hard part of making rice soup was choosing the rice. Most often, or rather almost always, rice was anonymous and mysterious. When you bought rice at the store, you could never say for sure what would come of it. Usually it cooked down into mush, in other words, porridge.
Rice soup made with rice like that wasn't very good, and proper, fluffy rice was fairly rare. For some reason I remember rice that fell apart so much that the grains looked like the letter X. Back then I was convinced that the word “kharcho” (in Cyrillic it starts with a letter that looks just like an X) came from that kind of rice.
This is a family recipe for rice soup, very simple and straightforward. It doesn't take any special skills. You just need to spend a little time and cook it. Most of that time goes into peeling the vegetables, a whole 10 minutes.
Ingredients
2 servings
- Rice 0.5 cup
- Carrot 1
- Onion 1
- Potatoes 1
- Garlic 1 clove
- Parsley 3-4 sprigs
- Salt, black pepper, bay leaf, dried herb mix (optional) to taste
Step-by-step recipe
- For a tasty soup, it's best to use long-grain rice with minimal stickiness that doesn't fall apart when cooked. Any parboiled rice works best; it's now sold almost everywhere, often labeled “converted” or “steamed”. It's very good for rice soup. The rice needs to be rinsed. The thing is, rice is polished: the tough outer hull is removed, and a lot of rice flour stays on the grains. First, it makes the broth cloudy and thickens it; second, polished rice often contains bits of hull, which aren't pleasant to bite into.
- Bring 1 l of water to a boil in a pot.
- While the water heats up, peel the garlic clove, onion, carrot and potatoes. Coarsely chop the garlic clove, or better yet, crush it with the flat of a knife.
- Cut the carrot into large pieces. No need to chop it finely or grate it. Chunky carrot pieces look nice in the soup and taste great too.
- Cut the potatoes into slightly larger pieces than the carrot.
- Cut the onion however you like: into strips or cubes. It's up to you.
- Add the crushed garlic clove to the boiling water, a little salt (you'll season it more later), pepper and, if you like, a couple of pinches of dried aromatic herbs. Also add 1-2 bay leaves.
- Add the chopped onion and carrot. Bring the soup to a boil and simmer over low heat for 5 minutes. Then add the chopped potatoes.
- Cook the vegetables for 15 minutes, covered, at a gentle simmer. Don't let the soup boil hard. The size of the vegetable pieces and sticking to the cooking time guarantee that the soup turns out right: all the vegetables will be cooked through and nothing will be overcooked.
- After that, add the rinsed rice. Rice takes 18-20 minutes to cook completely. But I recommend keeping an eye on it so it doesn't overcook, or you'll end up with porridge. Ideally, the rice should be cooked “al dente”, as the Italians say, meaning almost fully done but with a barely noticeable firmness in the center of the grain.
- 1-2 minutes before the soup is done, season with salt to taste and add finely chopped parsley.
- Ladle the finished vegetable soup into bowls and serve right away.
- It's delicious served with white bread lightly toasted in a dry pan.
| Yield: | 2 servings |
| Calories: | 44 |
| Prep: | 15 mins |
| Cooking: | 45 mins |
| Ready in: | 60 mins |
| Category: | Soups |
| Cuisine: | European |
| Rating: |
⭐
⭐
⭐
⭐
⭐
4.7
(2)
|