Cook it
The eight-plant soup, one pot, 18g of fibre
Cook it
The short answer
This soup delivers eight distinct plant types and roughly 18g of fibre per portion, which is over half the UK daily target. If pulses usually cause you bloating, the fix is to build up gradually and to cook them thoroughly with a bay leaf and cumin rather than avoiding them.
If you are trying to move your weekly plant count, soup is the most efficient tool in the kitchen. Nothing else lets you put eight distinct plant types into one pot in fifteen minutes of actual work and eat it four times.
Count them here: onion, carrot, celery, garlic, lentil, tomato, bean, kale. Eight, before the herbs and spices, which also count.
Eight plant types, four portions, fifteen minutes of work.
The most efficient tool for the 30-a-week targetA lot of people avoid pulses because pulses make them uncomfortable. This is real, and the usual advice to simply eat more of them is unhelpful.
What is actually happening is that your gut bacteria are not yet equipped to ferment the particular carbohydrates in pulses. That capacity is trainable, and it develops over weeks.
The ten minute vegetable base is the recipe. Onion, carrot and celery cooked slowly until genuinely soft build the depth that stock alone cannot. If your soup has ever tasted watery, this is why.
Acid at the end. Lemon juice added off the heat lifts everything. Added at the start, it toughens the pulses and disappears. This applies to almost every soup you will ever make.
Red lentils collapse, green ones hold. Use red if you want body, green if you want to see them. Do not use green expecting a thick soup.
Freeze it in portions before adding the greens, then add fresh greens on reheating. They go grey and sad in the freezer.
This version carries roughly 18g per generous portion, which is over half the UK daily target of 30g. Lentils and beans together are among the densest fibre sources available.
Because gut bacteria ferment carbohydrates in pulses that you cannot digest yourself, producing gas. That capacity is trainable. Starting with small portions and building up over about three weeks resolves it for most people.
Yes. A meaningful proportion of the fermentable sugars that cause discomfort sit in the tin liquid, so rinsing them well reduces the problem noticeably.
Yes, for about three months. Freeze it before adding leafy greens and add those fresh on reheating, since they lose colour and texture in the freezer.
Acid added off the heat brightens the whole pot and makes the other flavours read as finished. Added at the start it toughens the pulses and cooks away.