If you haven’t heard of the Hairy Bikers, you’ve missed something! They are two guys from the Northeast of England who ride motorbikes, and have created an enormously successful series of cooking shows on BBC TV. Go to https://www.hairybikers.com/about to learn about them, and be sure to visit their recipes page. They are surprisingly talented and diverse. Warning: you may need to turn on subtitles/CC in order to understand their accents.
Hairy Bikers’ Mulligatawny Soup
Mulligatawny is a soup which originated from South Indian cuisine.During the British Raj, between 1858 and 1947, the British soldiers stubbornly refused to alter their way of dining, requiring a soup at the start of the meal. The problem was soup was not a common dish in India. The Tamil servants watered down the ‘pepper water’ stew they had at home in Sri Lanka. The British eventually asked them to add mutton, chicken and other ingredients to suit their taste and this is how the many variations of Mulligatawny began.Mulligatawny is a richly flavoured soup, spiced with curry powder and thickened with rice. Perfect for a cold day, serve with a dollop of tangy sour cream.This dish is Vegetarian if you use a vegetable stock cube. It is Vegan, if in addition you substitute oil for the butter, and omit the yoghurt/sour cream.
Servings: 4 to 5
Ingredients
- 1 oz (25 grams) butter
- 1 tbsp sunflower oil
- 1 large onion finely chopped
- 2 garlic cloves chopped
- 2 medium carrots cut into 1.5cm/ ⅝in cubes
- 2 celery sticks thinly sliced
- 1 medium sweet potato peeled, cut into 1.5cm/⅝in cubes
- 1 eating apple peeled, quartered, cut into 1.5cm/⅝in cubes
- 1 tbsp medium curry powder
- 1 vegetable or chicken stock cube low-salt is best
- 2 pints (1 liter) boiling water
- 1 tbsp tomato purée
- 1 tbsp mango chutney*
- 3½ oz (100 grams) basmati rice
- 3½ oz (100 grams) natural yoghurt or soured cream to serve
- fresh coriander or flat-leaf parsley to garnish (optional)
- salt and freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
- Melt the butter with the oil in a large saucepan and stir in the onion, garlic, carrots, celery and sweet potato. Cook over a medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring regularly until the vegetables are beginning to soften and brown lightly. Stir in the apple pieces and sprinkle over the curry powder. Cook for a further 2 minutes more, stirring as it cooks.
- Crumble the stock cube into a measuring jug, and pour the boiling water over. Mix to combine. Pour into the pan, and stir in the tomato purée and mango chutney. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat slightly and leave to simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally . Cook until the vegetables are tender.
- While the soup is simmering, half-fill a medium pan with water and bring to the boil. Add the rice and return to the boil. Cook for 10 minutes, or until the rice is tender. Drain the rice in a sieve and rinse under running water until cold.**
- When the soup is ready, cool the soup for a few minutes and blend with a stick blender (immersion blender) or in a food processor until smooth before stirring in the cooled rice. If you want a more rustic texture to the soup, do not blend, or partially blend.
- Add enough water to give a good consistency, (about 150-200ml/5½-7fl oz). Heat the soup for 3–4 minutes until piping hot and check the seasoning, add salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.
- Ladle the soup into deep bowls and top each with a spoonful of natural yoghurt or soured cream. Garnish with sprigs of coriander or flat-leaf parsley if you like.
Notes
Original Poster’s Notes:
When I cooked this, I improvised:- I halved the amount of curry powder to accommodate for my wife’s reduced consumption of spicy food. The soup turned out to be hardly spicy at all, but we enjoyed it
- * We didn’t have any mango chutney, so I substituted fig jam, with a little cumin. It seemed to work.
- ** We cook our rice in an Instant Pot, so that’s what we did for this dish, too.
Bryan’s Notes:
- I, too, cooked my rice in our Instant Pot, using 1 cup of rice, rinsed, and 1 cup of water, with a small amount of olive oil. It made more than the recipe called for, but I put it in anyway.
- I used Major Grey’s Chutney.
- I made it vegetarian by using vegetable stock.
- We decided to try something different, and when we came to add water to get the soup to the proper consistency, we added Coconut Milk instead of water. It changed the taste, but it was good.
