Hearty Coconut Chickpea Soup

Hi Y’all….as my family in Virginia would say. Time to get cooking. And since it’s National Citrus Month, we figured why not make one of the many recipes that we have placed around the store. This one was taken from the website www.floridacitrus.org.

Ingredients

½ cup Florida Orange juice

1 tbsp. olive oil

1 cup diced yellow onion

1 red bell pepper, diced

1 ½ cups diced carrots

1 ½ tsp. kosher salt

3 cloves garlic, finely grated

½ tsp. ground cardamom

1 quart vegetable broth

1 14-oz. can lite coconut milk

1 14-oz. can chickpeas, drained & rinsed

Chopped cilantro, optional

One of the things everyone here at the store loves most when blogging about following different recipes is the opportunity to explain the changes that they make. Joan, who happened to make this soup just last night, made quite a few changes. And if you’re like me, you need those changes spelled out for you. I follow a recipe exactly…I don’t have much of an imagination when cooking. So keep on reading if you want to find out Joan’s secret ingredients.

Step 1. Heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Easy enough.

Step 2. Add the onions, bell pepper, carrots, and salt and cook until the onions are translucent, five to seven minutes.

3. Add the garlic and cardamom and cook one to two minutes more or until the garlic is fragrant. Do not brown.

4. Add the vegetable broth, coconut milk, and chickpeas and bring to a simmer. Joan didn’t have a second can of garbonzo added a second can of beans; she used white kidney beans. 

5. Decrease the heat to low and continue to cook until the carrots are tender, about 10 minutes.

6. Add the Florida Orange Juice and remove from the heat, stir, taste, and adjust seasoning as desired.

7. Serve garnished with cilantro as desired.

Keep reading… 😉

Once this was ready to serve, Joan felt it was necessary to doctor it up a little….well, more than just a second can of beans. She and her husband like lots of flavors! So she added an 8oz can of creamed corn, celery salt, red pepper flakes and (we’re surprised it wasn’t listed in the original recipe) just plain old salt & pepper. In retrospect, Joan says she wishes she had added celery and/or bok choy. Both of those veggies add great texture as well as flavor. And if you’re looking for some protein, chicken would work really well.

As someone who was given this soup for lunch two days in a row, I can easily say I love it so much that I’ll be making it! But I’m not sure I would have loved it without all of the changes Joan made. But they were simple changes, and now that I know about them, I won’t be fumbling with the how-to’s needed to make this soup an A+!

Give it a try and let us know how it turns out!