Sopa de Grao

This is a recipe for Portuguese Spinach & Chickpea Soup from Recipezaar (#189046). It’s likely I’ve always made it with vegetable stock instead of chicken stock.

Ingredients

• 4 c. chickpeas (2 cans or about 1 pound of dried if you are using them)
• 3 or more large garlic cloves, chopped
• 3 large yellow onions, peeled and coarsely chopped
• 5 T. olive oil
• 2 potatoes, peeled and coparsely chopped (Yukon gold)
• 2 T. fresh parsley, minced
• 2 T. fresh cilantro, minced
• 1 tsp dried marjoram, crumbled
• 4 c. chicken or vegetable broth
• ¾ lb spinach, chopped (fresh or frozen)
• up to 2 T. fresh lemon juice
• 1 ½ tsp coarse salt (or to taste)
• ¼ tsp fresh ground pepper (or to taste)

Directions

Fry the garlic and onions in 3 tablespoons of oil at the bottom of your stockpot until translucent. Add the potatoes and fry 2 to 3 minutes. Add the herbs and cook a bit at low.

Add the broth and bring to a simmer. Add the chickpeas, cover and cook slowly for about one hour or until everything is soft.

If you like your soup to have texture, ladle out a cup or so of chick peas and set aside. Using an immersion blender, puree the remaining soup to taste. Add in the spinach and any reserved chickpeas and simmer 20-30 minutes.

Lastly, stir in lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste and serve, hot, with crusty bread.

Variants

Cook 1 package soy chorizo according to package directions. Slice to bite-sized and add it to the soup at the spinach stage. (I used this one, which I found at Market Basket. It’s in the solid style, not crumbly like Trader Joe’s soy chorizo, and spices up the soup quite a bit.)

Alternately, add crushed red pepper to taste early on for spicing up.