Student Suppers: Spicy Tomato & Bean Soup

For anyone that reads my ramblings regularly you’ll know that I am a student. It is a well known fact that students are generally poor, but I want to bust the myth that we just live on beans on toast and bowls of cereal so we can spend on money on beer and vodka (or rum, in my case). So, I’ve decided to run this series called ‘Student Suppers’: they are recipes that I’ve found, come up with or tweaked that are cheap, tasty and fulfilling (hopefully healthy too, but I can’t promise anything!).

This soup is ridiculously cheap and very delicious. I brought all the ingredients for £1.50, and it should make around four to five bowls of soup – depending on how big you like your portions!

Add another can of beans instead of the stock and a bit more chilli for a yummy vegetarian chilli.

Ingredients:

400g of chopped tomatoes

400g of kidney beans in chilli sauce - or just plain tomato sauce if you can’t handle the heat ;)

400g of Borlotti beans (drained)

1 clove of garlic (finely chopped)

1 medium onion (finely chopped)

1 pint of vegetable stock

1 tbsp of tomato puree

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp paprika

(If you can handle the heat add a dash of Tabasco sauce, fresh chilli, or 1 tsp chilli powder too)

Method:

·         Heat the oil in a large saucepan, fry off the garlic and paprika (and fresh chilli/chilli powder if that’s how you roll) before adding the onion to soften.

·         Add the chopped tomatoes and all the sauce in the can too, along with the tomato puree. Leave this to simmer with the lid of the saucepan for fifteen minutes; this will reduce the tomatoes down, making them sweeter and taking the acidic taste out.

·         Pour in the kidney beans and their spicy sauce and leave to simmer for another five minutes. Then add the drained Borlotti beans.

·         Finally add the pint of stock to the soup, place the lid on the saucepan to stop reducing the liquid, and simmer for a further ten minutes.

Enjoy!