Instant Pot Red Velvet Beet Soup
This recipe includes directions for both regular stove top and pressure cooking. Velvety smooth amazingly delicious vegan soup, creamy with red lentils, and sublime with dark miso umami. Makes 6 cups, serves about 4 persons.
Servings: 5 servings.
Calories: 219kcal
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
- 1 medium red onion chopped (about 2 cups)
- 6 cups vegetable broth or water
- 1 cup red lentils rinsed and drained
- 2 carrots chopped
- 3 or 4 beets, well-scrubbed, ends and root hairs trimmed, chopped (about 2 cups chopped)
- 3 bay leaves
- 1 sprig fresh thyme optional
- 2 tablespoons red miso
- 1 ½ tablespoons chopped parsley, for garnish
- Fine sea salt, as needed, to taste
Instructions
- Heat the oil in the Instant Pot on Sauté. With a stovetop pressure cooker or soup pot, heat the oil over medium flame. Stir in the onion, sauté for 5 minutes, until the onion is translucent. Add the vegetable broth, lentils, carrots, beets, bay leaves and thyme.
- In the Instant Pot, manually set the time to 6 minutes. Quick release the pressure using the top vent.
- For conventional pressure cooker—bring to pressure and cook for 6 minutes. Quick-release the pressure under cold running water.
- For stove-top cooking, simmer on low heat for about ½ hour, or until the beets are very soft.
- Remove the bay leaves and thyme sprig. (see note!) Puree the soup until smooth and velvety. Puree right in the cookpot, or of you don’t have an immersion blender, puree the soup in a blender. (Do this in 3 batches, as the steam from hot soup in a full blender forces the lid off, making a huge mess. Been there, done that.)
- Put the miso in a small bowl. Add ½ cup of the pureed soup and stir to dissolve the miso well. Stir the miso mix back into the pot. Heat gently but do not boil. (See note.) Taste and add salt if you think it's needed--usually add heaping 1/4 teaspoon.
- Serve simply, garnished with chopped parsley.
Notes
- The reason you don't want miso to boil is that boiling destroys some of the nutrition of the miso, and changes the flavor.
- Blending creates a little foam that soon dissipates.
- Take heed: Once, in a rush to get dinner on the table, I forgot to take out the bay leaves and thyme sprig before blending the soup. It took 10 painstaking minutes with a sieve to return this soup to its velvet texture.
- Adapted from Natural Foods Cookbook: Vegetarian Dairy-Free Cuisine.
Nutrition
Calories: 219kcal | Carbohydrates: 36g | Protein: 11g | Fat: 3g | Sodium: 1439mg | Potassium: 628mg | Fiber: 13g | Sugar: 8g | Vitamin A: 4705IU | Vitamin C: 7.1mg | Calcium: 45mg | Iron: 3.4mg