Chicken and leek barley soup
A warm chicken soup with soft leeks, carrots and pearl barley.
About 55 min · 405 kcal · 36 g protein per serving
Beetroot, white bean and dill soup with quark
A deep pink beetroot soup with white beans and a spoonful of quark.
By The foodose editorial team. Nutrition calculated from USDA FoodData Central. Checked on paper on 21 September 2026; not yet cooked in a test kitchen or photographed, so the times and yield are estimates. How we develop our recipes
What still needs a real kitchen
- Confirm the apple collapses in 15 minutes of simmering
- Photograph the finished bowl
- Time
- About 37 min
- estimated
- Serves
- 2
- see below
- Energy
- 495 kcal
- per serving
- Protein
- 27 g
- per serving
Ingredients for 2 servings
Check off ingredients as you go.
Contains milk. Check the labels on packaged ingredients:
- cooked beetroot. Beetroot in vinegar is a different product; this figure is for plain cooked beetroot.
- vegetable stock. Vegetable stock often contains celery, and some contain milk or gluten; check the label, especially if you need it vegan.
Cooking steps
Soften the diced onion in the oil over medium-low heat for 8 minutes.
Dice the cooked beetroot and the apple, core and all but the pips, and add them to the pan with the drained beans and the stock.
Simmer for 15 minutes, until the apple has collapsed completely.
Blend until smooth. It will be a deep pink that looks alarming and tastes mild.
Serve with the quark spooned in and stirred through at the table, and the dill scattered over.
The useful detail
The apple is not there for sweetness but for acid. Beetroot on its own tastes flat and faintly of soil, and it is the apple that lifts the whole bowl.
Make it work for you
One serving is A deep bowl with 100 g of quark stirred through. You can switch to a smaller portion in the ingredients above; it is three quarters of this, and it contains correspondingly less energy and protein. It is an option, not a goal.
Greek yoghurt instead of quark
Looser and richer, and it swirls more readily into the soup.
Per serving: about the same energy, about the same protein, about 2 g more fat.
Butter beans instead of white beans
Creamier once blended.
Per serving: about the same energy, about the same protein, about the same fat.
Lemon juice in place of the apple
Sharper and thinner. The apple also gives body, which the lemon juice does not.
Per serving: about 35 kcal less, about the same protein, about the same fat.
Estimated nutrition
Per standard serving, calculated from the ingredients above. Nutrition changes with substitutions, brands and how much oil stays in the pan.
A soup where the beans and the quark carry the protein, which is what separates this from a beetroot soup that leaves you hungry.
| Energy | 495 kcal |
|---|---|
| Protein | 27 g |
| Fat | 8 g |
| of which saturates | 1 g |
| Carbohydrate | 83 g |
| of which sugars | 34 g |
| Fibre | 15 g |
| Sodium | 2,090 mg |
Show calculation notes
Each ingredient’s weight is multiplied by its USDA FoodData Central values per 100 g. The whole recipe is added up and divided by 2. Raw weights are used for meat, fish and vegetables; beans and lentils are drained weights. All of the oil is counted as eaten. Added salt is not included; sodium from stock, bread, cheese and tinned food is.
| Ingredient | Weight used | Source | Energy | Protein |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| onion | 120 g | FDC 170000Onions, raw | 48 kcal | 1.3 g |
| olive oil | 14 g | FDC 171413Oil, olive, salad or cooking | 121 kcal | 0.0 g |
| cooked beetroot | 500 g | FDC 169146Beets, cooked, boiled, drained | 220 kcal | 8.4 g |
| apples | 150 g | FDC 171688Apples, raw, with skin (Includes foods for USDA's Food Distribution Program) | 78 kcal | 0.4 g |
| white beans | 300 g | FDC 175204Beans, white, mature seeds, canned | 342 kcal | 21.8 g |
| vegetable stock | 685 g | FDC 171583Soup, vegetable broth, ready to serve | 34 kcal | 1.6 g |
| quark | 200 g | FDC 172181Cheese, cottage, nonfat, uncreamed, dry, large or small curdFoodData Central has no quark record. Calculated as dry-curd cottage cheese, the closest fresh unripened curd cheese it holds; the two are close in energy and protein, and your pot's label is the exact figure. | 144 kcal | 20.7 g |
| fresh dill | 10 g | FDC 172233Dill weed, freshFresh dill is 43 kcal per 100 g on FoodData Central 172233, so the few grams a recipe uses add 2 or 3 kcal. That record has no sugars value, so the dill is listed here rather than counted, which keeps the recipe's sugars calculable. | · | · |
| Whole recipe | Divided by 2 | 987 kcal | 54.2 g |
Per serving the energy is rounded to the nearest 5 kcal, grams to the nearest whole gram and sodium to the nearest 10 mg. Ingredients marked “Not calculated” are excluded and could add at most 3 kcal to the whole recipe. Calculation method 1.0, September 2026. How the calculation works.
Storage and reheating
- In the fridge
- Cool it quickly, cover and refrigerate within 2 hours. The FDA chart gives soups and stews 3 to 4 days. It keeps its colour better than most soups. Add the quark fresh rather than storing it stirred in.
- In the freezer
- The same chart gives soups and stews 2 to 3 months in the freezer for best quality.
- Reheating
- Reheat until it reaches 74°C / 165°F, steaming hot throughout, stirring so it heats evenly.
Checked against US Food and Drug Administration, Refrigerator and Freezer Storage Chart, USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, Leftovers and Food Safety, FoodSafety.gov, Safe Minimum Internal Temperatures and FoodSafety.gov, Cold Food Storage Chart. UK guidance from the Food Standards Agency is shorter, at two days for most leftovers.
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