We've been asked a lot about our recipes for bulk cooking - how to adapt usual recipes for such a big amounts, how to make it quick and cheap and tasty, what equipment it requires?
Maybe this recipes will not be too useful for regular household, but they definitely will be useful for community kitchens, and for food relief NGOs like ours! We are proud of our bulk cooking experience! As chefs, especially at the beginning of our LVK operation, we've been through all the challenges possible - in particular because bulk cooking has a little to do with our home or restaurant cooking experience. So we pulled the ideas out of our hats. We made mistakes, tested, developed. We learned to come up with recipe for any possible choice and amount of products.
And we are about to share this sacred knowledge. Bit by bit. Starting with broccoli cream soup!
------------------------------------------------
For 40 liters / 1350 ounces (about 150 portions) of delicious vegan broccoli cream soup you will need: + 3 kilos of carrots + 8 kilos of potatoes + 5.5-6 kg of broccoli + 1.5 kg of onions (for smaller amount of food onion/everything proportion should be different - much more onions. It's just what we notices - bigger amount of onions doesn't change much in case of bulk cooking) + 300 g of lentils + 450-500 ml of sunflower oil + 150 g of salt + 100 g of Svanuri marili (Svan salt, green salt) - Georgian mix of salt, herbs and spices. + 200 g of fresh garlic + 200 g of "ten veggies" (dried veggies and herbs mix) + 25 g of nutmeg + 2-3 g of black pepper + 2-3 g of bay leaf + 50 g of "fragrant pepper", as we call it in Ukraine (aka Jamaican pepper, pimento, allspice)
------------------------------------------------
1) Soak lentils in water.
2) Wash, peel and cut everything. Carrots, broccoli and potatoes - any shape, size about 2-3 cm (1 inch), so they cook fast, but don't take to much time to chop. Onions - same, no need to waste time (and cry your eyes out) chopping it really finely, still it has to be chopped enough to cook well (half rings are perfect). 3) Put 40 liters pot, filled at 1/3 with hot water, on the stove. Add potatoes, carrots, broccoli, lentils, salt and spices, all at once.
2) Meanwhile cook onions in oil until good and brown.
3) Once the veggies and lentils are cooked, add onions with oil, and fresh garlic (chopped or squished).
4) We are processing our cream soups with our Robot Coupe blender. It was kindly fundraised for us by FARM, and it made our daily cooking routine so much easier! Cream soup is faster to cook (no need to chop everything nice and pretty - in a case of 20 kilos of veggies it really is a time saver), and easier to serve (solids are not separating from the liquids, and you don't have to try and catch all the ingredients with a ladel).
5) When serving, sprinkle with some fresh green herbs (dill and parsley, for example).
6) Smachnoho!