Bottle gourd soup or lauki ka soup is generally not a welcome soup by family members. Generally it is given to sick persons for them to gain strength and to keep the digestion in control.
But have you ever tried bottle gourd soup with tomatoes🍅 🍅.
Tomatoes add wonderful flavor to the soup along with shallots.
Bottle gourd and tomato combo goes very well. If I prepare bottle gourd in simple curry form or with chana daal, then I add tomato puree in it. In Louki ke kofte ki sabzi Lauki ke kofte ki sabzi (grated bottle gourd dumplings in curry) also we use tomatoes for puree. With the addition of tomatoes no one is going to say no to this wonderful, nutritious soup. But if because of some health reasons or unavailability of tomatoes you are not able to add tomatoes, add some lemon juice in the soup. Lemon juice also helps in enhancing the taste of bottle gourd.
I have a few more soup posts in the blog. If you are interested, can check them also…
Ingredients:
Bottle gourd 200 gm
Tomatoes 100 gm
Shallots 40 gm
Butter 1 - 2 tbsp (optional)
Salt as per your taste.
Black pepper as per your taste.
Water 4 – 5 cups
Some points to remember:
- Try to avoid ripen bottle gourd which has big seeds in it. Select complete raw bottle gourd.
- Vegetable stock can be used along with water. But I preferred to use only water as it helped in enhancing the taste of tomatoes, shallots and bottle gourd.
- Generally cornflour is used to increase thickness in soups. But because of nice pulp of bottle gourd, this soup was anyhow quite thick. So we don’t need to add cornflour.
- Regular onions can also be used in place of shallots.
- Cream can be added during serving to enhance the taste and flavor.
Process:
Wash all three veggies and peel shallots and onion. Next, chop all in small pieces.
In a pan or pressure cooker boil them in one cup of water and 1/8th tsp salt till all veggies become soft.
After boiling, grind them in a mixer and sieve the pulp to avoid seeds in soup. Add rest of the water to this thick pulp and boil it on sim heat for 10 – 15 minutes. Add butter and salt and pepper according to your taste.
Serve hot soup with croutons or bread sticks and enjoy your winter evening!
