Butternut squash, carrots and parsnips are the whole of Hairy Bikers golden vegetable soup, blended smooth with water and a stock cube. It comes from The Hairy Dieters, their weight loss book, and lands at 102 calories a bowl. Six servings take just over an hour.
They write in The Hairy Dieters that it has a velvety texture they both love, and that it is the thing to chase away your dieting blues. The colour is where the name comes from, since squash, carrot and parsnip all blend to the same deep golden orange.
The ratio is what makes it work. Roughly 1.55kg of vegetables goes into a single litre of liquid, so blending alone gives you a thick soup. Most recipes use twice the water and then add cream to fix the thinness that follows.
Hairy Bikers Golden Vegetable Soup
Description
Onion and garlic soften for a full ten minutes before anything else joins them. Squash, carrot and parsnip then simmer in just-boiled water with a crumbled stock cube until completely tender. Blended smooth, this Hairy Bikers golden vegetable soup needs nothing else.
Ingredients
Instructions
- Prepare the squash: Peel the squash, cut it in half and scoop out the seeds. Cut the flesh into rough 3cm chunks.
- Prepare the rest: Peel the carrots and parsnips and cut them into 2cm slices. Peel and roughly chop the onion and garlic.
- Soften the onion: Heat the oil in a large non-stick saucepan and gently fry the onion and garlic for 10 minutes, stirring now and then, until softened and lightly coloured.
- Add the vegetables: Stir in the squash, carrots and parsnips. Pour over the just-boiled water and crumble the stock cube on top, then bring to the boil.
- Simmer: Turn the heat down slightly and simmer for 25 to 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are completely tender.
- Blend and serve: Take the pan off the heat and blitz until smooth with a stick blender, or leave it a little chunky if you prefer. Warm through, season with black pepper, then top with yoghurt and chives.
FAQs
How is it only 102 calories?
Because almost nothing in it carries any. There is no cream, no butter, no milk and no potato, just 2 teaspoons of oil split across six servings.
The thickness comes from vegetables instead of dairy. Their tomato soup with fresh tomatoes sits at 290 calories a bowl because 120ml of double cream goes in at the end, and that one ingredient is most of the gap.
Why water rather than proper stock?
With 1.55kg of vegetables in the pan, the vegetables become the stock. Squash, carrot and parsnip all give up plenty of sweetness over half an hour, so the cube is there for salt and background savouriness rather than flavour.
Fresh stock works if you have it, though check the label, since some shop-bought fresh stocks carry more calories than the entire recipe’s worth of oil. Just-boiled water also gets the pan back to temperature faster.
Why fry the onion for ten minutes?
There is no fat in this soup to build flavour with later, so the onion has to do it up front. Ten minutes on a low heat turns it soft and sweet, and that sweetness carries the whole pot.
Rushing this step is the usual reason a low-calorie soup tastes of nothing. The onions want to be lightly coloured, not browned. Their winter vegetable soup gets away with five minutes, because chorizo and smoked paprika are doing that job instead.
Smooth or chunky?
The book leaves the choice to you, though smooth is the point of this one. The velvety texture is what Si and Dave single out, and it is what turns a pan of boiled vegetables into something that feels rich.
Blend it properly, for a minute or two rather than a quick blitz. Parsnip leaves fibrous strands if you stop early, and those strands are the thing most likely to give away that no cream went in.
Does it freeze well?
Very well, and better than most, because there is no dairy in it to split. Cool it, portion it and freeze for up to three months, then reheat gently.
Leave the yoghurt off until you serve. It goes on at the table anyway, so freezing it would only introduce the problem this recipe avoids. Their Somerset chicken is the opposite case, built on double cream and best eaten the day it is made.
