Easy One-Pot Vegetable "Dump Soup" - Oil-Free - How To Cook Delicious Meal

Today I wanted to show you a pretty typical way that I make dinner.

I don't like to cook with recipes.

I think recipes are great, but they tend to make things a little more complicated than they need to be.

You have to think a little harder when you're planning your shopping list to make sure you have everything from all the recipes, and inevitably you'll still forget something or you get to the grocery store and they don't have something, so you'll have to be figuring something else anyway.

So I think it's a lot easier just to make things up.

What I do is look at whatever fruits and veggies look good at the grocery store that week, and that way you're also usually saving a little money because the things that look the best are usually in season and they're usually a little bit cheaper.

And then I'll take whatever fresh veggies I got and mix them with grains and beans that I have in my pantry.

I'm gonna do a kitchen tour video and if I've already published it I'll go ahead and link that for you so you can take a look, but I always keep my pantry stocked with a variety of different whole grains and beans, and pretty much anything will go with anything, so you can mix and match whatever beans and grains you want with whatever veggies you have that week.

And then all you need to know are what spices and herbs you like, and if that's the part that's kind of scary for you because you don't know what spices go together, Google is your best friend.

So you can just go online and search for different spice combinations or maybe even buy some spice blends, like what I'm using today is very similar to an Italian seasoning blend, so you could also just use pre-made spice blends.

And then I just pretty much dump everything into the pot.

Now if you want to be fancy and saute different things you can, but it's just so much easier to dump everything in and you really don't have to saute in steps.

There are a few things I'm going to leave until later just because they don't take as long to cook, and I don't want them to get mushy.

Dump ingredients in a pot and simmer

So let's go ahead and get started.

I'm using a dutch oven here, but you could just use a large pot as well.

First things first if you do want to saute your onions and mushrooms and things like that, you do not need to use oil.

I just use a little water or veggie broth to loosen things up if things start to stick.

I've already prepped my veggies, what I have here are mushrooms, onions, carrots, and celery.

Next I'm going to add some potatoes that I've peeled and diced.

And even though I don't cook with recipes, I will put all of the amounts in the description box for you.

And then the other veggies that I'm using are some leftovers that I had from last week that I didn't use up.

So soup is a great way to use that up, so I have some cabbage and a mix of broccoli and cauliflower.

I'm actually going to hold off on putting these in the pan because these don't take as long to cook.

I'm also adding a cup of french lentils.

You could use green lentils, brown lentils, black lentils, even red lentils.

The red lentils will cook a lot quicker, but red lentils are great for thickening up your soup, so that's a little hack if you've made a soup and you wanted it to be more stew-like, just throw some lentils in there, cook them down and they'll just disintegrate into the soup.

But today I'm using french lentils which I've already washed.

If you're using french lentils, green, brown, or black lentils, they will take a little bit longer to cook, so that's why we go ahead and put them in now.

I'm also adding in a jar of tomatoes, these are crushed tomatoes and this jar is 18.

3 ounces, but you could also use a can or a couple of cans of tomatoes, the exact amounts really don't matter.

Then I'm going to add in my herbs.

These are all dried herbs, but you could use fresh as well and again I'll put all the amounts in the description below.

So this is basil, parsley, oregano, thyme, rosemary, bay leaves, and then I also have a little bit of garlic and onion powder, even though I have onions in here I like to use the powder too, I think it just gives it a nicer flavor.

And then we'll add some liquid.

I like to use vegetable broth to give some extra flavor, but you can also just use water if you like.

I like this Pacific vegetable broth because it's low sodium, and it also doesn't have any oil or sugar.

You'd be surprised how much stuff they add into vegetable broths.

There's also a brand called Kitchen Basics that's a no salt added, and ironically I think this one actually has lower sodium than the one that's no salt added.

And that just depends on whatever vegetables and the concentration of vegetables they've used because vegetables do naturally have sodium in them.

I'm probably going to add this whole container, and I might even need some extra water, but I recommend going a little lower on the liquid to start.

You can always add more, but it's a little more difficult to remove the liquid.

You can continue to cook it to let it reduce down, but it's a lot easier to just use a little bit less liquid keeping in mind that all these veggies will give off some liquid as well.

And I also don't want to waste any of these little bits of tomato in here, so I'm going to pour some of the veggie broth in here and put the lid on shake it up just to get all of that goodness.

We'll pour that in and then the rest of the broth.

Also when adding the liquid keep in mind since we're using dried lentils they will soak up a lot of the liquid.

Again you can always add more liquid though.

And I'll just give everything a nice stir and if you want to come take a look, And now that I have everything added I'm going to put the lid on just so everything comes up to temperature pretty quick, and I'll turn the heat up to bring this to a boil.

Once this comes up to a boil, I'll let it cook for about 15 minutes, I'll add the rest of my veggies, and then let it cook another 15 to 20 minutes.

You can really let this cook as long as you like to get the vegetables to whatever texture you like.

The lentils will take about 30 minutes to cook.

Add additional ingredients and simmer

My soup has been cooking for about 15 minutes, and it smells delicious, so now I'm going to add the rest of my veggies.

I have that cabbage and the broccoli and cauliflower, and I'll stir that in.

And at this point you can decide if you want to add some more liquid.

I think this still looks pretty good so I'm not going to add anything just yet.

The veggies that we just added will give off some more liquid.

So I'll put the lid back on, and we'll cook it for another 15 minutes or so.

Finishing touches

Our soup is almost done, so it's cooked for a total of about 30 to 40 minutes.

I did end up adding about a half a cup more water, again you can choose how much liquid you want so that it's the consistency you like.

And then you just want to make sure you fish those bay leaves out.

And then I like to finish my soups with a little bit of lemon juice or some kind of vinegar, and I actually don't have any fresh lemon juice right now, so I have this little ice cube of lemon juice.

I freeze lemon and lime juice like this, so pour that in and it will melt right into the soup.

And that's it! I feel like every soup recipe I make should just be called “dump soup” because that's literally what I do.

I just dump everything in the pot, and cook it.

And then I'll just serve this with some cooked grains.

This is a mixture of sorghum and brown rice.