Vegan Moroccan Chickpea Soup Recipe

Vegan Moroccan Chickpea Soup Recipe

This cheap vegan soup recipe is easy one pot cooking for students and will feed 6 people or 1 mook for 6 days. Even Caliphs love their harira soup.

The Moroccans have it right. Pretty much everything they make is healthy and delicious, much like the Greeks and Spanish, and it’s really easy to avoid meat if you’re cooking Moroccan recipes at home. This vegan soup is known as harira soup. It keeps well in the fridge, can be made almost entirely from stored tins and spices and is very filling and good for you. It’s also quite a relaxed recipe, no need to worry if you don’t get the amounts since you’ll be tasting as you go…

Recipe ingredients

  • 1 tin of chickpeas
  • 1 tin of your choice of yellow, green or puy lentils
  • 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
  • 1 tin of spinach if desired
  • 1 very large or 3 small onions
  • 1 cube vegan vegetable stock
  • Spice suggestions: Coriander, Cumin, Paprika, Turmeric, dash of cinnamon and/or ginger
  • Condiments: Salt and pepper
  • How to make this vegan recipe

    1. Get a decent soup-sized saucepan and sautee the chopped onion. There’s no such thing as too much onion, it’s tasty stuff. To sautee the onion, add a healthy tablespoon of (ideally) olive oil and keep stirring the chopped onions on a low heat (about gas mark 2 or 3) so they don’t burn but go translucent and soft.

    2. Add your spices – in all, you’ll want about a tablespoon of spices, and coriander and cumin are the most important ones. Keep stirring until all the chopped onions are coated.

    3. The ultra easy bit – add your tinned chickpeas, lentils, tomatoes and spinach if you’re a spinach kind of person. We’re spinach kind of people. Stir it all together and take off the heat. Yes, you can soak chickpeas overnight, but it’s difficult to get the soft texture right and once you’ve boiled them for an hour the price of gas means it all starts getting a bit expensive and time-consuming. So we’re going with tinned chickpeas. Each to his or her own, eh?

    4. Mash a cube of vegan vegetable stock into a mug of hot or just-boiled water. When it’s ready, put the saucepan back on a medium heat (about gas mark 3 or 4) and add the stock mix.

    5. Add another mug of water. Taste the soup so far and see what you think. If it’s very watery and bland, remember the taste will increase as the soup evaporates a little.

    6. Simmer down the soup on a low boil for about 10-15 minutes.

    7. When you think it’s ready, have a taste. If it needs salt or spices, add them to taste, a little at a time so you can tell when you’ve hit the taste you’re looking for.

    8. Enjoy. If you want to be funky about it, squeeze in some fresh lemon, add some fresh chopped coriander to the top and you’re veggie rather than vegan you can even spoon a dollop of greek-style yoghurt or decadent sour cream onto the top.

    If you’re taking your cooking to the next level, you can prepare this soup and a million other things in a traditional Moroccan tagine. It’s a lovely thing, of course, but by no means necessary. A saucepan will do.

    And thus… a delicious vegan harira soup, easy to prepare and fit for a Caliph. Inshallah!

First eat this soup, then eat your way through a Moroccan souk.