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
Pea, mint and quark soup
A bright green pea soup with mint and a spoonful of quark.
By The foodose editorial team. Nutrition calculated from USDA FoodData Central. Checked on paper on 20 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 frozen peas are tender after 4 minutes in boiling stock
- Photograph the finished bowl
- Time
- About 23 min
- estimated
- Serves
- 2
- see below
- Energy
- 505 kcal
- per serving
- Protein
- 30 g
- per serving
Ingredients for 2 servings
Check off ingredients as you go.
Contains gluten, milk. Check the labels on packaged ingredients:
- vegetable stock. Vegetable stock often contains celery, and some contain milk or gluten; check the label, especially if you need it vegan.
- sourdough bread. Bread often contains soya and can contain milk, egg or sesame; check the label.
Cooking steps
Soften the diced onion in the oil over medium-low heat for 8 minutes, without colouring it.
Add the stock and bring it to a full boil.
Tip in the frozen peas and cook for 4 minutes. No longer.
Take the pan off the heat, add the mint and the lemon juice, and blend until smooth.
Stir the quark through, or spoon it on top, and serve with the sourdough bread.
The useful detail
Four minutes and not a minute more. Peas lose their colour first and their sweetness immediately afterwards, and a khaki pea soup never tastes like a green one.
Make it work for you
One serving is A bowl with 100 g of quark stirred through and a slice of sourdough. 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. Stir it in off the heat so it does not split.
Per serving: about the same energy, about the same protein, about 2 g more fat.
Leave out the dairy
Lighter and vegan. The soup loses about a third of its protein.
Allergens: Removes milk.
Basil instead of mint
Sweeter and less sharp. Add it off the heat the same way.
Per serving: about the same energy, 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 blended soup where the peas and the quark together make it a meal, which a vegetable soup on its own would not be.
| Energy | 505 kcal |
|---|---|
| Protein | 30 g |
| Fat | 10 g |
| of which saturates | 2 g |
| Carbohydrate | 76 g |
| of which sugars | 21 g |
| Fibre | 13 g |
| Sodium | 1,960 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 |
| vegetable stock | 685 g | FDC 171583Soup, vegetable broth, ready to serve | 34 kcal | 1.6 g |
| frozen peas | 500 g | FDC 170016Peas, green, frozen, unprepared (Includes foods for USDA's Food Distribution Program) | 385 kcal | 26.1 g |
| fresh mint | 15 g | FDC 173475Spearmint, freshFresh mint is 44 kcal per 100 g on FoodData Central 173475, so the few grams a recipe uses add 2 kcal at most. That record has no sugars value, so the mint is listed here rather than counted, which keeps the recipe's sugars calculable. | · | · |
| lemon juice | 15 g | FDC 167747Lemon juice, raw | 3 kcal | 0.1 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 |
| sourdough bread | 100 g | FDC 172675Bread, french or vienna (includes sourdough)Calculated with FoodData Central's French or Vienna bread record, which it states includes sourdough. | 272 kcal | 10.8 g |
| Whole recipe | Divided by 2 | 1007 kcal | 60.6 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 loses colour on the second day. Blend fresh mint in when you reheat.
- 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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