Lunch / Dinner
Chorba Vegetable Soup
Loaded with fresh ingredients and flavors, you’ll crave this good-for-you soup whether it’s hot or cold outside.
Originally from Turkey but now also popular in North Africa and the Middle East, it’s no surprise that recipes for chorba [CHOR-bah] vary far and wide. Standard ingredients include onions, carrots, tomatoes, and garlic, plus small noodles such as the fideos [fih-DAYohs] used here. There’s a lot of creative freedom with chorba, though. For instance, adding turnips to this recipe may seem strange, but it provides great texture. And ginger and turmeric complete the delicious flavor profile.
Ingredients
Test Kitchen Tips
Small, young turnips have a delicate, slightly sweet taste that gets stronger with age. Opt for small ones that are heavy for their size, then wash, trim, and peel before using.
Short, thin noodles are best in this soup. If you can only find fideos as long strands coiled into bunches, simply break them. Broken vermicelli works, too.
Instructions
Combine onion, carrot, celery, turnips, garlic, turmeric, ginger, and broth in a large pot. Bring soup to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer 15 minutes.
Boil water in a separate pot. Blanch tomatoes in boiling water for 30 seconds. Let tomatoes cool enough to handle, then remove skins and seeds; chop tomatoes.
Off heat, stir tomatoes and fideos into soup; let sit 2 minutes. Stir in parsley and season soup with salt and pepper.
Give the soup pungent flavor as well as a vibrant yellow-orange color by including turmeric.
To make peeling easier, core out the stems and cut an “X” on the bottom of each tomato before blanching.
The tiny fideos noodles don’t take much to cook through — simply add them to the hot soup off heat.
Nutritional Facts
Nutritional Facts
Per serving
Calories: 129
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 1g 1%
Saturated Fat 0g 0%
Cholesterol 0mg 0%
Sodium 121mg 5%
Carbs 25g 8%
Fiber 3g 12%
Protein 6g
*Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.