Cooking on a budget: cheap and warming curried carrot soup (Cooking on a Budget!)

Member Name: ms_memory

Product:	Cooking on a Budget!
Date:	03/03/09 (114 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fairly simple, very tasty, cheap ingredients, vegetarian

Disadvantages: As with most soups, requires a bit of chopping, peeling and blending

At this time of year, a combination of cold weather, unavoidable post-Christmas frugality (yes, 2 months on!) and the desire to eat a bit more healthily before spring arrives usually prompts me to cook up a few batches of the ultimate cheapo comfort food: soup. The following recipe is one of the easiest I've ever made; it requires simple ingredients which cost very little, tastes a lot better than tinned or packet soup and is very good for you to boot (makes 2 large portions).

You'll need:

A couple of onions
Around 6 medium carrots
Vegetable stock cubes or powder made up into 500ml of stock
100 ml of milk (I use semi-skimmed, but full cream might be even nicer)
Couple of desert spoonfuls of plain yoghurt or crème fraiche
Parsley (dried or fresh)
Curry powder
Bread (if desired)

Directions:

Peel and chop the carrots and onions
Fry them until they start to go soft (onions first, then add the carrots)
Add the veg stock and simmer for 20 mins
Blend (I use a stick blender and blend the mixture in the blender cup rather than in the pan as it's less messy this way)
Pour the mixture back into the pan and stir in 100ml milk and a dessert spoonful of curry powder
Heat through for another couple of minutes
Taste and add more curry powder if required
Serve with swirl of plain yoghurt or crème fraîche, a sprinkling of parsley, and some crusty bread.

Summary: Lovely!