If you love Indian flavours, check out my Butter Chicken Recipe and Red Lentil Dahl. I’ve been enjoying my recently discovered love for soups and it’s been fun to experiment with flavours. Don’t get me wrong I’ve been cooking soups since I was a teenager. After all I grew up in a Russian family but I never learned to truly appreciate soups until adulthood. That might be because as an adult I started exploring different flavours and cuisines, which led me to so many delicious soup recipes from all over the world. This mulligatawny soup is one of them.
Mulligatawny soup recipe
Although considered an Indian soup by many, mulligatawny soup is part Indian, part British. This sort of fusion cuisine is certainly not unheard of, with tikka masala as a particularly famous example. This one was invented by Indian cooks when the British kept requesting soup as the first course during the colonial rule. Of course, soup is not traditional to Indian cuisine and mulligatawny was developed from something else entirely. Originally it was just a thin sauce served over rice but over time got bulked up with vegetables and meat to accommodate the British taste. The result is a slightly creamy soup, surprising as there is no dairy to be found. What isn’t surprising is aromatic, complex and mildly spicy soup. It’s comforting, wholesome and an amazingly satisfying meal.
Ingredients
This soup can take a lot ingredients as long as it’s got the non-negotiables.
red split lentils (moong dal) traditional Indian spices like turmeric, ginger, garlic, cumin and coriander meat stock rice
There are of course hundreds of recipes for this delicious soup. Many of them blend the soup once it cooked and serve it over rice. My version however, keeps the mulligatawny soup chunky with rice added to it.
How to make it
As you can imagine any soup recipe will benefit greatly if you start with a delicious tasting stock, which takes hours to make. We don’t always have hours. So to make it easier and quicker I developed this recipe using leftover roast chicken and ready made stock. Another shortcut I used is a scoop of a curry paste with all the spices blended for me already. Instant flavour without the fuss. Using my quick mulligatawny soup recipe you can have a delicious and filling meal in 30 minutes. You can also use your leftover turkey or chicken in a recipe that tastes completely different from where it started!
Serving suggestions
Some people add a dollop of plain yoghurt or cream to their bowl of mulligatawny soup but I prefer it without. I do enjoy adding a squeeze of lemon though, along with chopped parsley! What I always add to a soup lunch is a hearty piece of chunky sourdough bread, although this recipe is perfect for flatbread or naan.
Storage and leftovers
Soup can be kept in the fridge for 4-5 days, or frozen for up to 3 months. This makes batch cooking a great option. Make some extra and keep it for whenever the urge for a warming soup hits you! The rice in the soup has the tendency to soak up liquid as it sits, so you may need to add water or stock to keep it loose when reheating. Reheat by returning to a saucepan and bringing to a boil, or in a microwave if a small amount.
More hearty soup recipes
Slow Cooker Thai Chicken and Wild Rice Soup Yellow Split Pea and Ham Soup Restorative Beef and Cabbage Soup Chestnut and Squash Soup Harvest Minestrone
