Dive into a bowl of warmth and nutrition with our $7 Lentil Soup. In this episode of Struggle Meals, we’re showcasing how a humble legume can transform into a hearty meal that’s kind on your pocket.
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We’re going to start off with budget lentil soup imagine you’re on vacation you just moved into a house you went to a friend’s place and there’s literally no ingredients the cost of this recipe includes every single ingredient that you need to make this dish literally nothing else life can be a struggle but
A good meal doesn’t have to be we can make creative nutritious and inventive dishes that won’t break the bag we’ll eat well and save money cuz that’s what we do welcome to struggle meals so we’re going to start off with carrots and onion because you can buy them
Individually I’m cutting off the ends and we’ll save these in the stock bucket even these ends can give us flavor in the future in fortifying a store-bought stock or making our own stock if we really build up those reserves high enough Okay cool so we’ve got our
Carrots now I don’t have any oil I’m not about to go buy a bottle of oil because there goes my whole budget if you’ve got a packet of butter absolutely use it but if you have nothing it shouldn’t stop you from making soup so I have nothing
I’m putting my carrots into a naked pan Here Comes an onion into the stock bucket all right this onion’s going in it’s making me cry but the soup’s going to be beautiful going to give this a stir here you know the carrots and onions are naturally releasing oil so they’re both
Sort of being steamed and grilled at the same time is it the same as a sauté absolutely not but it’s still dehydrating and intensifying flavors so it’s worth doing this step even if you don’t have a fat to cook in now we’re going to rinse our lentils
This bag right here will yield quite a bit I’m going to save the other half of this for another time it is included in my price today but you know what we get more meals for the things that we bought that’s fantastic lentils are affordable they’ve got a lot of protein and they’re
High on Nutrition a quick rinse could just basically clean them off a tiny bit it which is nice coming in with our lentils we’re going to add some tomatoes to this dish and I’ve got fire roasted tomatoes because they’ve got even more flavor very nice let’s put them
In oh you can smell it right away because I don’t have access to traditional seasonings I’m trying to build up flavor wherever I can that’s why I’m using fire roasted tomatoes more flavor I found a packet of taco seasoning this is our Sal this is our
Pepper this is our spices it’s going to make everything taste better when you don’t have salt and pepper on this budget I just can’t justify buying an entire thing of spices to use a teaspoon so I’m using a taco seasoning packet because it’s got spices and it’s got
Salt therefore it’ll be the majority of our flavor for this dish so we’ve got flavor we got spices we’re dropping the stock which in this case is water drop the water oh it’s not as fun as the stock there’s nothing in it I want a refund bringing our soup up to a simmer everything we need for a delicious meal is in there while that happens we’re going to make our rice rice is an affordable grain it lasts a very long time if you don’t use all of it right now and you can also purchase
It in dry bulk two to one water to rice boom we’re going to have some leftover rice for another meal isn’t that fantastic yes it is we’ll bring this up to a simmer as well all right this is boiling now I’m going to turn it all the
Way down to low to a simmer and we’re going to cover it our soup’s just about ready now I’m going to add in my spinach because frozen spinach is already wilted down you get a lot more bang for the buck over the fresh stuff we don’t have to
Cook this we just need to warm it through so it can be literally just a minute or two to top off our soup I’ve got a little bit of yogurt and a single lime both of these you can buy in single serving portions so this is perfect for
Our budget so everything’s ready let’s make a bowl we’ve got some rice fantastic plastic and we’ve got our lentil soup o we’re going to hit it with some of our yogurt it’s going to make the whole thing nice and creamy and finally a wedge of
Lime this is $6.99 for the entire pot of soup plus you get extra rice and lentils for another dish it looks absolutely delicious it smells fantastic and it’s definitely hearty let’s dig in M this tastes great we got a really flavorful soup here we’ve got that taco
Seasoning packet that’s just giv us all kinds of spices and salt throughout it’s hearty it’s nutritious you’ve got an incredibly affordable price and all we had to do is make some thoughtful purchases this is a great solution to an empty pantry