Italian Soup- Thermie Style

This week I made Italian Soup in the TMX. I halved the recipe on the packet and there was still not much room in the TM bowl. I do not make it exactly the way the packet says I should. I swap the cabbage for potato and add the ingredients at different times. The result from these timings was the the lentils and veggies were not quite soft enough but still nice. I like the method for making Maltese soup which I shared before, and I have applied that to the Italian soup. It means that all parts of the soup are soft and comforting to eat. Trying a new method for the recipe. I have popped the ingredients in bold so you can easily see what you need.

I chopped the ham from the bone, leaving some pieces with skin on and a little ham fat. I then popped it in the TM bowl with some butter on Varoma reverse speed soft/speed 1. I left it cooking for about 10 minutes. Then removed the ham and wizzed the onion, and popped the ham back in and continued to cook as above for another 6 minutes.

I had the lentils (I used the Italian soup mix) soaking on the side while I was preparing beforehand. I popped them into the basket with the potato (about the size of a bar of soap, cubed) ham and onions. The basket was pretty full. I popped in some water, veggie stock and tomato paste and set that to cook on Varoma speed 4. I had to turn it down to 90 after about 10 minutes as the soup started bubbling over.  When it was time to add the carrot (diced) and a 1/4 cup brown rice, they would not fit in the basket, so I took it out and had everything in the TM bowl cooking at 90 degrees on reverse speed soft for half an hour.

I then repeated the step above with the celery (diced, reverse speed soft 90 degrees for 30 mins). Then add a handful of pasta to a casserole dish and pour hot soup over and stand for 30 minutes. Serve with a squeeze of lemon juice, and a slice of bread.

Cooking with less ingredients, say 1/3 of the lentils mix and a little less ham (leaving enough room for the carrot and celery) would mean that I could cook it on a higher temperature without the mixture bubbling. If I was making it in the Kogan TB, I would keep the lentils, veggies and ham in the basket, so they were away from the blades.

Certainly making it this way means that there was not a whole heap of soup that I was eating for days on end. There was enough for dinner for 2, lunch for 1 and breakfast for 1. If More food was the desire, than cooking it for longer on lower heat would work too. If using a TB you might have to sacrifice a little in appearance… but then again its soup, is it meant to be pretty?

I have tried this recipe in the Kogan withoth the blade cover but it shredded the ham, so I made cabonara instead.