Ren Behan - Author Wild Honey and Rye

Food Writer

Recipe: Chorizo, Chicken and Chickpea Soup

I love making a big pan of soup that uses up lots of ingredients from my store cupboard or leftovers. This chorizo, chicken and chickpea soup ticks both boxes.

The inspiration came to me via Dom’s Random Recipe challenge. This month, we were tasked with selecting a cook book from the shelf to correspond with our birthday date. My birthday is 15th of March, so I picked out the 15th book, which was Ros Dobson’s Whole Food Kitchen. Appropriately for ‘Random’ Recipes, I remember finding this book in a clothes shop sitting beside a large pile of winter clothes as part of their display. I didn’t buy any clothes, but they did sell me the cook book. You can see that my priorities do not lie in fashion!  

Whole Food Kitchen

Anyway, I flicked open the book to page 41 where I found two recipes – Creamy cannellini, leek and sorrel soup or Smoky chorizo and haricot bean soup. Although they both sounded delicious, I had more chance of finding the ingredients for the chorizo soup in the kitchen, so went with that one.

Chicken & Chorizo Soup

As with all good cooking adventures, I departed from the list of ingredients. The basic recipe calls for chorizo sausage, red onion, garlic, Spanish smoked paprika, chopped tomatoes, chicken or vegetable stock, haricot beans and flat leaf parsley. 

I didn’t have haricot beans or Spanish smoked sweet paprika, but I did have a packet of diced smoky chorizo and a tin of chickpeas. I also found a bag of spinach  to use up, a couple of carrots and some leftover roast chicken. For extra texture, I sprinkled in some giant wholegrain cous cous, too. A one-pot meal, bursting with flavour.

Along with some garlic bread, it will make the perfect fodder for keeping warm whilst watching the fireworks in our back garden tonight.

Chicken & Chorizo Soup

Here’s how I made it:

Chickpea, Chicken and Chorizo Soup

Adapted from Ros Dobson’s Whole Food Kitchen

Original recipe – Smoky Chorizo and Haricot Bean Soup

Ingredients:

  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 150g/one cup smoky chorizo sausage, cubed
  • 1 red onion, chopped
  • 2 carrots, peeled and grated
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 400g/one  tin chopped tomatoes or passata
  • 750ml/3 cups chicken or vegetable stock
  • 1 tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed (or use harricot beans or even lentils)
  • A handful/one cup leftover roast chicken, shredded
  • 150g/one cup giant wholegrain cous cous
  • 160g bag organic spinach
  • A handful of fresh curly parsley

Method:

  • Heat the oil in a large pot, add the chorizo sausage and fry for a few minutes. Once crispy, take out a little bit of chorizo to garnish.
  • Add the red onion, carrot and garlic to the pan and fry for another few minutes until the onion softens.
  • Add the tomatoes, stock, chickpeas, leftover roast chicken and giant cous cous. Cook for around fifteen minutes on a gentle heat, stirring occasionally.
  • Add the bag of spinach and stir through until wilted. Take off the heat and sprinkle over the parsley and some of the crispy chorizo.
  • Serve while piping hot, enjoy!

Chicken & Chrorizo Soup

As well as linking this up to Random Recipes, I am also sending this across to Karen’s Herbs on a Saturday challenge, too as I love adding curly parsley to soups!

Herbs on Saturday

Don’t forget, Simple and in Season is back home this month, you can link up here.

Any ‘random’ clothes shop cookery book purchases on your shelves?!

 

About Ren

Ren Behan is a British-born food writer of Polish descent. She is a mum to three young children (13, 10 and 5) and spends lots of time with them in the kitchen. Ren writes about seasonal, family-friendly food on her blog www.renbehan.com. She also contributes recipes and articles to online and print food publications, such as Food52.com, GreatBritishChefs.com, Huff Post Food and JamieOliver.com. She holds a Diploma in Food Journalism with Distinction and has completed a Food Styling course at Leiths School of Food and Wine.

Ren’s cookbook, Wild Honey and Rye: Modern Polish Recipes, draws upon her Polish heritage and regular travels to Poland.

Reader Interactions

Comments

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  8. What a wonderful, filling tasty bowl of soup! Your photos are beautiful! I must admit, I tend to frequent more places that I can buy a cookbook than places I can buy clothes. That display book looks like a great find!

    Reply

  10. Hi Ren

    I’ve just seen the link on Dom’s RR roundup (I am a first time entrant!)

    I have to say that the photo was just so inviting, could almost smell your soup over here in north London. I have to say that chorizo is one of my favourite ingredients to cook with, so you were always onto a winner. But I love the addition of the “fat” couscous – must try that trick!

    Reply

  11. A clothes shop that sells cookbooks sounds like my kind of place – and this is an absolutely incredible soup. It’s suddenly very cold here today and this is just what I feel like. Thanks!

    Reply

  14. simply stunning as usual Ren, what a deeply hearty and flavoursome soup and that book looks fantastic, I must hunt it down… you must have been pleased with your pick this month to end up with something so gorgeous. Fab pictures as always… thanks so much for taking part xx

    Reply

    • Hi Dom, I was pleased, it is a lovely book and I don’t know why I don’t cook from it more often. Lots of comforting one-pot meals and soups. A lovely way to bring it back to my attention 🙂

      Reply

    • Thanks Laura, I’m sure your soups are always warming and tasty 🙂 Think of a recipes with pomegranates now for One Ingredient!

      Reply

  17. This looks great. I really love this kind of meal, where everything is in one pot and you can make enough for lunch the next day. Like the idea of adding couscous too. Making chorizo next week from the copious amounts of pork in our freezer (we had Berkshire pigs to clear the pesky weeds from our back garden in the summer) and will return to this recipe. Andrea

    Reply

    • Hi Andrea, yes exactly, plenty left for lunch today, I can hardly wait till lunchtime! Wow, your home chorizo-making sounds wonderful, good luck with that!

      Reply

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