I had some zucchini sitting in my fridge and wanted to do something that wasn’t “sauté and serve over rice.” So I made it into a soup. I pressure cooked this in my Instant Pot, but you could easily simmer this on the stove.

Ingredients

  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • 1 tsp kosher salt
  • 2 tbsp vegetable or other neutral oil
  • 1 (16 oz) can chickpeas
  • 1 quart tonkotsu ramen broth
  • 3 medium-sized zucchini

Instructions

  1. Cut the zucchini into one inch pieces.
  2. Drain and rinse the chickpeas.
  3. Set the Instant Pot to sauté mode.
  4. Once it’s hot, add the oil.
  5. When the oil is hot, add the chickpeas, zucchini, and seasonings to the Instant Pot.
  6. Continue to sauté for 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until the zucchini and chickpeas start to brown.
  7. Pour in the ramen broth.
  8. Turn off sauté mode, close the lid of the Instant Pot, set it to sealing, and pressure cook for 10 minutes.
  9. Let the pressure release naturally for 5 minutes, then quick release and open the lid.
  10. Transfer the soup into a blender and blend until smooth.
  11. Ladle the soup into bowls.

Makes roughly 2 quarts of soup.

My notes

This turned out really good. However, I have a strong suspicion that the ramen broth is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this recipe—I haven’t made it with chicken or vegetable broth yet.

Despite the richness of the ramen broth, the zucchini flavor really shines through (and the color is great). I’ll be making this one again in the future and working on a vegetarian version.

This goes really well with some fresh cracked pepper and crusty bread.