{"id":3676,"date":"2018-06-09T16:46:50","date_gmt":"2018-06-09T22:46:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vegetatingwithleslie.org\/?p=3676"},"modified":"2018-06-09T16:54:11","modified_gmt":"2018-06-09T22:54:11","slug":"instant-pot-veggie-soup-middle-eastern-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vegetatingwithleslie.org\/?p=3676","title":{"rendered":"Instant Pot: Veggie Soup Middle Eastern Style"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my tiny cafe, we served up sixteen fresh salads, three soups and a daily special every day as well as homemade condiments. We made everything fresh from whole foods, so as you can imagine, we had to move pretty quickly. Mornings in the cafe were not the time to meditate on seasonings — so I developed templates for myself.<\/p>\n

I had two soup templates — pur\u00e9ed soups, for which I relied on my pot and my VitaMix, and chunky soups, which needed only a pot and now my Instant Pot. This recipe is one of the latter, although I never made it in the Cafe. I just created it now from what I happened to have in my refrigerator.<\/p>\n

My chunky soups almost all began the same way: I prepared my beans to barely al dent\u00e9\u00a0(oh my gosh, the IP changed my world of beans) and set them aside. The exception to this process was lentils, which I added after the initial veggie saute. I filled the bottom of a very large soup pot with extra virgin olive oil and saut\u00e9ed lots of chopped onion and garlic in it. Sometimes I added petite diced carrots and celery to that. Then I added water sufficient for the soup (along with lentils if I was using those). Sometimes the cooking liquid included petite diced tomatoes, either fresh or canned, sometimes a little tomato paste, sometimes tomatoes and tomato paste, sometimes none of those, just broth. The water with the saut\u00e9ed onions, garlic, carrot and celery made was a lovely broth base for anything else I might add — and now, if I want to get really fancy with extra layers of flavor, I can add an IP broth from veggie “waste” if I happen to have some on hand. I added beans back into the pot close to the end of cooking time.<\/p>\n

My basic Middle Eastern seasoning set was 3:3:1 — Salt:Cumin:Hot Paprika, that is, the same amount of salt as cumin and one-third as much hot paprika. For a three gallon pot, that would be three tablespoons of salt, three tablespoons of cumin and 1 tablespoon of hot paprika. Of course, I always used a little less than the template so I could adjust for variations in how the soup mingled with the seasonings — and I often added a variety of other typical Middle Eastern seasonings for more textured flavors. These included fresh ginger root, crushed coriander, harif<\/em><\/a> (Arabic: harissa<\/em>), fresh mint and more. And of course lemon, which brightens everything.<\/p>\n

So that was how this veggie soup came about. I wanted lunch from my Instant Pot today so took an inventory of my ‘fridge and found that in addition to the standard veggies I always have in the house, onions, carrots, and a little red bell pepper, I had some grape tomatoes, a head of cauliflower and redskin potatoes. Here’s what happened with that:<\/p>\n

INSTANT POT VEGGIE SOUP MIDDLE EASTERN STYLE
\nIngredients<\/strong><\/p>\n