If you are following Meal Plan 8, use the chicken stock you made earlier, and the green lentils you cooked earlier in the week.

Chicken Noodle Soup

100g onions, Asda 2kg/ £1.08, 5p
100g white cabbage Asda 57p/kg, 6p
100g carrots, Asda 57p/kg, 6p
100g egg noodles Asda 100g/ £1.86, 37p
100g dried green lentils, Asda 500g/£1, 20p
a litre of chicken stock
60ml oil, £1.25/litre, 8p
Serves 4
Total cost 82p, 20p per serving
per serving 308 calories, 10g protein, 15g fat, 37g carbs

If your lentils aren’t cooked yet, soak them, preferably overnight, and simmer gently until they are soft. They will only need about 10 minutes if soaked overnight. Or just use a can.

Peel and slice the onion, shred the cabbage. Dice the carrots, peel if you like.

Put the oil in a large pan and saute the onion and carrot until soft. Now add the chicken stock and simmer gently until the vegetables are cooked through. If you want to whizz some of the soup, you could do it now, or after you have added the green lentils. Add the green lentils before or after whizzing the soup. Finally add the white cabbage and simmer until cooked through, about 10 minutes.  I whizzed half of the soup as I wanted some pieces of veg.

Break up the noodles into small pieces and add to the soup, cook for just a few minutes, noodles cook very quickly. Now season well with salt and pepper, freshly ground if you can.

The noodles make this soup a little different and are there to use up the noodles in meal plan 8, as is the 60ml oil. If you are not following the plan, you don’t need that much oil, although of course the calories will be less, which may be a good or a bad thing for you.  As is the case with all soups, you can add all sorts of things to this – the little dishes of leftovers in the fridge make fabulous soup.

This is easily made vegetarian or vegan by using a vegetable stock instead of the chicken stock. If you want to make it gluten free, use GF noodles