Spicy Winter Soup - Spiced Up By Bilal

During the winter months, we are particularly prone to picking up colds and chest infections. For me, winter is THE season to ensure my diet is nutrient rich to help stave off those nasty bacteria and viruses! To do this, keeping warm is absolutely essential, and there is nothing better at raising the body temperature than a hot’n’spicy winter soup!

Soups are a great way of getting vitamins and minerals quickly into your body. The nutrients from the plethora of ingredients seep into the water which packs a powerful nutritional punch!

So, onto my Spicy Winter Soup for up to 4 people!

I have some favourite ingredients which you will see over and over again in my main dishes and those are onions, red onions, spring onions, garlic, ginger and of course chilli! Give me those ingredients, and depending on the order in which I use them, I can cook you an Indian, Italian or Turkish dish!

INGREDIENTS

1 onion

1 red onion

3 spring onions

4 cloves of garlic (I love garlic in my food)

1 cm of ginger

1 large tomato or 6 cherry tomatoes

1 red chilli

1 green chilli

1 long red pepper

1 long green pepper

1 Parsnip

1 Leek

1 Sweet Potato

1 Carrot

1 Chicken Breast

Olive oil

Salt

Pepper

1 litre of filtered and boiled water

INSTRUCTIONS

In a saucepan on ¾ heat, add 3 tablespoons of olive oil (put the water on to boil in a kettle);
Slice and dice the onions (hold back the green leaves of the spring onions until the end), garlic (I cut the garlic knobs up, press them in a garlic crusher and add them directly into the saucepan) and ginger and add to the saucepan to sauté. Stir regularly until the mix starts to bronze;
Chop in the tomato(es) and cook until they soften;
Cut the chicken breast into cubes, add to the saucepan and cook (and stir!) until all raw bits disappear;
Chop in the parsnip, leek, sweet potato and carrot and add them to the boiling water for 5 minutes;
Chop in the chillies and peppers (if you want your soup spicier, add the chillies with the boiling water);
Taste the soup and add salt and pepper according to your preference;
Cover with the lid and leave the soup to simmer on a medium heat for around 10 minutes;
Add the chopped spring onion leaves and cover for 5 minutes;
Feel free to add any coriander to garnish and you are ready to !