Category Archives: rice

Easy Vegetable-Bean Soup

rice, Soup,

Hello!

Sorry it’s been a while. I’ve been grad-student-ing, and I haven’t had time to really keep track of stuff or discover new recipes or things like that and write them down. But I did discover / make a tasty soup the other day. I’m not entirely sure how much it cost, but I’m sharing the basic recipe.

The broth

This is something that can be used for basically any soup variation you can think of. I use the Chicken Better than Bullion stuff. I made about 6 cups of broth, so 2 heaping tablespoons of the Chicken Stuff, and six cups of water, on the stove. (I used the heaping measures, since I knew I was adding liquidyish stuff to the broth that would dilute the original.)

To that, I added about a can of tomato paste. (What can I say? I really like tomato!) An alternative is a can of stewed tomatoes. Or you could do both.

Note: I added a bit of salt to this broth. That’s in part because I really like salt, and because I was using the low-sodium Chicken Stuff.

Boil this in a soup pot. Or start to heat it and add the other stuff while it’s heating.

The seasonings and “stuff”

Seasoning: What I did the other day was I added parsley, basil, and some ground clove. It worked well.

Stuff:

  • Vegetables
  • 1 C Rice
  • 1 can of beans (Drained, rinsed. I used black beans.)

For vegetables, I used what I had on hand. I think that included an onion, a zucchini, a couple large sticks of celery, and a few handfuls of baby carrots. This is super flexible, though. And be aware that your onions will probably end up really mushy if you boil them for a while and cut them too fine.

After it boiled, I turned the heat down and let it simmer for as long as the rice was supposed to cook, stirring at random intervals. I actually put the rice in early on, and then added the vegetables as I was done chopping them. (Harder veggies, like carrots, went in first. Then the others. Really, though, those are extremely flexible if you don’t mind mushy vegetables.)

“Garnish”

When I had the soup, I just sprinkled some white cheese on top. Ok, so I actually put a handful of shredded mozzarella, a cut-up babybell, and a torn string cheese at the bottom of a bowl, reheated the soup to about boiling, and then spooned the soup over the cheese.

I like cheese.

Other options that would have been great to include would be chicken. Or chicken with cheese. (Given that I used clove, the white cheese worked better than cheddar would have.)

So, yeah. I think that was a generally inexpensive recipe, and it lasted me for a week of lunches. I hope you enjoy!

Easy Vegetable & Rice Soup

About A Buck, rice, Soup

Hello, readers!

I have recently been using variations on a type of soup for my dinners. And sometimes lunches. Because I’ve made a very easy, inexpensive recipe that’s fairly flexible, fairly tasty, and fairly filling.

Easy Soup Recipe

I love this recipe, in large part because it’s inexpensive in both money and time. Prep time: about 5-10 minutes, tops. Cooking time: 20-45 minutes. Total: less than an hour until you get a hearty, delicious soup. 🙂

Necessary Ingredients (makes about 4-6 servings.)

  1. 6 cups of water (free)
  2. 2 TBSP of either chicken or beef “Better than Bouillon” (BtB) (About $1 if you get it from Amazon, so call it about $.2/serving.)
  3. 1 small can of tomato paste ($.3? So, $.07/serving?)
  4. 1 onion ($.50-$.60? I dunno… $.10-$.12/serving)
  5. 2 carrots ($.2, so $.04/serving)
  6. 2 celery sticks ($.2? $.04/serving)
  7. 1/2 C rice (Negligible.)
  8. Beans (Optional. I use black beans or pinto beans.) ($.95, so $.2/serving)
  9. (optional) some almonds, pecans, or (I haven’t tried this one yet) walnuts. (This makes it a bit more expensive. But I use about 1/3 of a cup for the entire recipe, so it’s still not that bad.) (I am not going to include the price here.)

Optional spices

The prices here are mostly negligible.

  1. Freshly ground pepper to taste
  2. Cinnamon to taste
  3. Prepared Mustard (I use Beaver’s Hot and Sweet when I use the beef BtB)
  4. Parsley to taste
  5. Basil
  6. Oregano
  7. Salt (not needed with normal BtB)
  8. Cheese. (Either white or cheddar, or white cheddar.) ($.5 or $.6/serving.)

Total cost: about $.65/serving. (Not including the price of any bread you choose to have with it. But that’s also fairly inexpensive, and probably costs no more than about $.10/serving. So, call it about $.75/serving. Not bad!)

Directions

  1. In a soup pot, bring 6 C of water to a boil
  2. While water is boiling, slice onions, carrots, and celery. Add to the water at any point in time.
  3. When water is boiling, add the 2 Tbsp of BtB, the spices, and the can of tomato paste. Stir until BTB is dissolved, and tomato paste is well incorporated
  4. Add the 1/2 C rice, stir.
  5. Reduce heat as much as possible, as though you were cooking the rice. Cover, and let sit for at least 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally to keep the rice from sticking.
  6. (Optional) After about 15 minutes, heat the beans you will want in your soup.
  7. (NONOPTIONAL). When soup is done, serve into bowl. (If including beans in order to get the complete protein, or whatever it is, combine the two sets now.)
  8. (optional) If using cheese, now’s a good time to add it in. My personal favorite combo is a combination of the “babybell” cheese, mozzarella, Parmesan, and Romano.
  9. (Optional) Heat some french bread (or other starchy bready thing) to go with.
  10. (completely nonoptional) Enjoy. 🙂

Fun with Rice “Milk”!

beverage, rice,

Hi there!

I’ve been having a bit of fun with rice. And my blender. And honey and cinnamon and vanilla. And you now basically have the “recipe” I was going to give you. Oh well, here it is anyway!

1 Cup of Rice Milk(ish) Stuff!

Recently, I’ve been wanting something sweet (but not smoothie) to drink. So, I decided to explore the world of rice milk. I’m rather glad I did. I grew up with having Horchata every once in a while, and I love that stuff. What I’ve been making is not horchata, but it’s reminiscent, and so makes me happy.

Ingredients

  • 1/3 Cup cooked rice. (I did not add salt or anything. I just cooked up about 3 cups of rice, took 1/3 of a cup, and put the rest into the fridge to be used at a later time.)
  • A bit less than 2/3 cup water.
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla
  • Cinnamon to taste
  • About 1 tsp of honey. (I did not measure this.)

Throw all of those ingredients into your blender. (I used my vitamix.) Blend until smooth. Chill, and enjoy.

Isn’t that easy? It’s also really inexpensive. A five pound bag from walmart supposedly costs a bit less than $3. (For the sake of ease, let’s call it $3.) According to various answers around the internet, there’s about 2.5 cups of uncooked rice per pound. There are therefore about 12(ish) cups of rice in a five pound bag. (Yes, I’m severely rounding. I’m making it cost more, though, and it’ll still be really inexpensive, so forgive me. 🙂 )

So in this case, each uncooked cup of rice would cost about $0.25. A cup of uncooked rice turns into about 3 cups of cooked rice. So the rice for this serving was about 1/9 of $0.25. Call it about $0.03. (Again, rounding errors factor into this.) The water was free, I bought the vanilla in bulk so a 1/2 tsp is sooo not worth calculating the cost of, and the same goes for the cinnamon and honey.

Even so, let’s add a penny. So, we’d get to about $0.04 for a very tasty drink treat. Not bad, from my perspective! Less than a nickle!

I hope you enjoy!