The rice is boiled in a separate pan for Hairy Bikers mulligatawny soup, then stirred in only at the end. The recipe is from Mums Still Know Best, a curried vegetable soup with carrot, celery, sweet potato and apple. It serves four at about 295 calories a bowl and takes just over an hour.
They write in Ultimate Comfort Food that the name comes from the Tamil words for pepper and water. The soup began in India and reached Britain in the nineteenth century, and they reckon the meat was a British addition. There is no meat in this one, though it does call for chicken stock unless you swap it for vegetable.
Rice cooked in soup drinks the stock, and it keeps drinking it. Boiling it in its own pan and adding it at the end is what keeps this a soup rather than a stew. Do it the other way and you have curried porridge by the second bowl.
Hairy Bikers Mulligatawny Soup
Description
Carrot, celery, sweet potato and apple soften in butter before the curry powder goes in. Stock, tomato purée and a spoonful of mango chutney follow, then thirty minutes on the hob. Rice cooked in its own pan finishes this Hairy Bikers mulligatawny soup.
Ingredients
Instructions
- Soften the vegetables: Melt the butter with the oil in a large saucepan. Add the onion, garlic, carrots, celery and sweet potato, then cook over a medium heat for 10 minutes until they soften and colour a little.
- Add the curry powder: Stir in the apple and sprinkle over the curry powder. Cook for 2 minutes more, stirring.
- Simmer: Pour in the stock and stir in the tomato purée and mango chutney. Bring to the boil, then turn down and simmer for 30 minutes, until the vegetables are tender.
- Cook the rice: While the soup simmers, boil the rice in a separate pan for 10 minutes until tender. Drain it and rinse under cold running water.
- Bring it together: Stir the rice straight into the soup, or blend the soup smooth first and then add the rice. Loosen with 150 to 200ml of water.
- Serve: Heat through for 3 to 4 minutes and season to taste. Ladle into deep bowls, top with yoghurt or soured cream and scatter over the herbs.
FAQs
Why rinse the rice under cold water?
Two reasons. It stops the rice cooking any further, and it washes off the loose starch clinging to the outside.
That starch is what would otherwise thicken the soup and make it claggy. Their chicken biryani starts from the same idea, washing the basmati until the water runs clear before it goes anywhere near the pan.
Should I blend it or leave it chunky?
Either, and the book is clear that it is your call. What changes is the chopping: cut the vegetables chunky if you plan to blend them, finer if you are leaving them whole.
Decide before you pick up the knife. Chunky gives you a spiced broth with diced vegetables and rice in it, while blending gives you a thick curried soup with the rice stirred through.
What is the mango chutney doing in it?
One tablespoon goes in with the stock, for sweetness and a little acidity. Curry powder alone can taste flat and dusty, and the chutney lifts it.
The apple and sweet potato work the same way. Their chicken korma reaches the same place with ground almonds and yoghurt, which is why korma and mulligatawny both suit people who do not want heat.
Can I add meat to it?
Yes, and the book suggests it. Stir cooked chicken or mince in at the end and heat it through, which turns four bowls into a proper meal and stretches it to five.
That is the shortcut version. If you want meat cooked into the spice properly, their lamb curry braises for over three hours to get there, and Ultimate Comfort Food has a separate lamb mulligatawny with swede and red lentils.
Can I make it ahead?
The soup base yes, the rice no. Stop at the end of the simmer, cool it and keep it three days in the fridge, then boil fresh rice when you reheat.
Their chicken noodle soup has the same rule for its noodles. Anything starchy sitting in stock overnight takes the liquid with it, so keep it apart until the bowls are on the table.
