Bethany's Vegan Kitchen

This comfort food classic contains no meat or dairy, but has the same creamy, meaty, hearty flavour as the non-vegan version. It’s easy to make, and would be a great pick me up if you’re feeling under the weather. This will make six servings of soup, so feel free to halve the amounts listed if you want to make less, then follow the method as normal

Yield; Six servings Cook time; 40 minutes

You’ll need;

1. 40g dairy free butter, I used Flora Plant Butter
2. One medium brown onion, diced
3. Two medium carrots, peeled and diced
4. Two sticks of celery, diced
5. Four cloves of garlic, minced
6. One medium potato, diced
7. One litre of hot stock, I used a 50/50 mix of vegetable stock, and chicken free chicken stock
8. Herbs; one teaspoon of parsley, one teaspoon of oregano
9. 120g dried udon noodles, broken into small pieces. I used Yutaka dried udon noodles, I found these worked well as they’re flat and thin, so they didn’t soak up too much of the stock and go mushy
10. 250ml hot water
11. 320g shredded vegan chicken, I used No Chick Strips which I bought from Iceland
12. 200ml cream, I used tofu cream. See the note under the recipe for more information

Method;

• Start by melting the butter in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Once it’s completely melted add in the onion, carrots and celery, give them 10 minutes to soften
• Next, add in the garlic and give everything a stir. Give it another two minutes to cook
• Once the garlic has become fragrant, add in the potato, stock, herbs, and then season to taste with salt and black pepper. Pop a lid on the saucepan and leave the soup to simmer for 20 minutes
• While the soup cooks, prepare the vegan chicken. I find the easiest and tastiest are No Chick Strips from Iceland. All you have to do is pop them onto a microwave safe plate, microwave them for five minutes, then thinly slice the pieces
• Next add the noodles, hot water and shredded vegan chicken into the soup. Give everything a good stir and leave it to continue cooking for five minutes
• Finally, stir through the tofu cream, give it two or three minutes to heat through, and then it’s ready to serve

Tofu Cream

Tofu cream is a dairy free cream that I make using silken tofu and plant milk. It’s really versatile and worked beautifully for this recipe. All you need to make it is a 350g carton of silken tofu, and between 200-250ml plant milk. As silken tofu is so soft, you don’t need a high speed blender to blend the cream, any blender or stick blender will do

For this soup I wanted the tofu cream to be slightly thicker, so I blended to tofu with 200ml plant milk. This creates 550ml of tofu cream, so after using 200ml for this recipe, the remaining 350ml of cream can be used for other dishes

I use tofu cream in a few different ways;

• It’s great for cream based pasta dishes, or added to tomato based pasta sauces to add creaminess
• I also like adding it to curry sauces, it adds a lovely creaminess without the added oil that can make a curry sauce feel “heavy”
• I love adding a little tofu cream to fried mushrooms, to eat as they are or to make a creamy mushroom sauce
• I also like adding a little tofu cream to my scrambled tofu, it adds a lovely creamy richness to the scramble

So if you decide to go with tofu cream for this recipes, that’s how you can use up the leftover cream

There are of course other plant based alternatives to cream that are available. Alpro, Elmlea and Oatly make plant based cream alternatives, they’re available from most supermarkets.