Have Your V8 and Eat It, Too: Chipotle Vegetable Soup
I was the fourth child in a litter of five, so large-batch meals were par for the main course, and as I grew up on a cattle farm, we always had a significant vegetable garden featuring every kind of pea and bean locally available for cultivation. Thus, vegetable soup was an Abel mainstay during the winter.
The garden was a family project, and many a summer night were spent in front of the television snapping fresh beans and shelling peas that would be cooked, frozen and stocked away in the deep freeze for year-round meals.
Those hot summer days hoeing and picking were a torturous chore to a kid. Calluses, in simple terms, suck, and the goal of filling a pea bucket over the course of a day was not high on a kid’s priority list when swimming pools and baseball were calling. But still, I look back on the experience fondly, in particular because of the meals that were produced as a result.
This is a recipe that I have put together over the last few years. It’s the base that is important as the mixture of beans, peas and other vegetables can vary to your tastes, and I have certainly been inclined to cook a pound of beef or ground turkey and throw it off in there for a little extra protein, as well.
The only problem? Trying to fit all the vegetables that you want in your soup pot. The bigger the pot? The better.
Though the ingredients lean toward a Southwestern flavor profile, none are so pronounced to label it as such. The chipotle adds a subtle background heat and smokiness. It’s a meal low in calories, nutritious and high in fiber, and with a hot pan of buttered cornbread, it’s childhood to my taste buds.
Oh, and it freezes beautifully, as Annelle would say. Enjoy …
Chipotle Vegetable Soup
One 64 oz. bottle of Spicy V8 Vegetable Juice
4 – 6 TB of diced chipotle peppers in adobo (such as La Costena)
One 6 oz. can tomato paste
2 medium onions, diced
4 stalks celery, diced
4 carrots, peeled, diced
2 TB butter
One 14.5 oz. can stewed tomatoes
One 15.5 oz. can dark red kidney beans
One 14.5 oz. can blackeye peas
One 14.5 oz. can purple hull peas
One 15.5 oz. can lima/butter beans
One 15.5 oz. can cut green beans
One 11 oz. can white shoepeg corn
One 15.5 oz. can sweet/English peas
2 TB chili powder
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp garlic powder
Salt, to taste
In a large soup pot, melt the butter then add the carrots, onion and celery. Cook for about 10 minutes until soft, but still a little toothy.
Add the can of stewed tomatoes. Drain and rinse all the cans of peas, beans, and corn, and add them in except for the can of sweet/English peas. Add it the last 5 minutes of cooking.
Depending on the size of your soup pot, add 6 or more cups of the V8 and stir. Heat to a simmer.
Add tomato paste and diced chipotles. Start with 4 TB each and stir until incorporated. Add more if needed - the paste will thicken the soup and the chipotle heat it up. It will depend on the amount of vegetable juice you can get in your pot.
Add seasonings and salt to taste. Simmer for 30 minutes and add the English peas during the last 5 minutes, just to heat them up.
Ladle into bowls and enjoy.