Jamaican Red Peas Soup Without Meat
Learn how to make Jamaican red peas soup without meat. This delicious vegan peas soup with a tasty coconut broth that soothing and nourishing. For the best results, use dry kidney beans and homemade coconut milk. But if you are pressed for time, you can use tinned beans and milk instead! Bonus: vegan red peas soup is super healthy with just 163 calories per serving!
Jamaican Vegan Red Peas Soup Without Meat
If you are already familiar with Jamaican food, you will know that we call kidney beans peas. Kidney beans (peas) are the main ingredient for this soup dish. With lots of vegetables and ground provisions, Jamaican red peas soup is a whole meal even without the meat.
Like rice and peas and stew peas, this peas soup dish is cooked in coconut milk for a sweet-savoury taste.
The soup’s ingredients and the preparation method are similar to our vegan stew peas recipe, except for the added water, coconut and ground provisions, which means both dishes taste the same. So if you love stew peas, you will love our vegan red peas soup recipe.
This Ital red peas soup is perfect for vegans or someone having a meat-free day.
Use homemade coconut for this recipe, the soup will taste so much better! I know making the coconut milk will extend the cooking time, but it will be worth it.
Let me assure you, coconut is very easy to make and won’t take very long, and you can make the leftovers for a long time if frozen.
Also, using dry kidney beans is better for this recipe. As the beans are the main ingredients, use the best to get the best result. Dry beans will absorb more of the flavour from the other ingredients. If you are health conscious, you will be please to hear that dry beans are much healthier than canned ones.
If you are using raw beans as I did, using a pressure cooker will help reduce the time it takes to cook the beans.
Soaking the beans for at least two hours before cooking can also help soften the beans and reduce the cooking time.
What You Need To Make Vegan Red Peas Soup
It may seem like a lot goes into making this stew peas soup, even with the meat, but trust me when I say this dish is worth every effort.
- Dry red kidney beans: Even though it takes longer to cook, I use dry kidney beans because the soup turns out better when using dry beans. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t get a great-tasting pot of soup using can beans.
- Coconut milk:If you have tried any of my other recipes with coconut milk, you will know by now that I like using fresh coconut milk. Because it tastes way better than canned coconut milk, and I have seem to have lots of time on my hands lol.
- Choice of ground provisions: Here I’m using only yellow and pumpkin, but any group provisions of your choice will do.
- Vegetables & seasoning that’s a must:The soup won’t work without onion, scallion, thyme, garlic, pimento berries (allspice), carrot, or scotch bonnet pepper.
- Plain flour: This is to make the dumplings. No Jamaican soup is complete without dumplings.
- For flavour: You will need a little salt, but salt alone won’t give you that Jamaican flavour. To make this recipe authentically Jamaican, I have used a pack of Grace Pumpkin Soup Mix. If you don’t wish to use the soup mix, you can use vegetable cube stocks.
How To Make Red Peas Soup
- Prep the beans: If you’re using dry beans, you want to give them a good wash before using. Then soak the beans for about 3 hours are so. If you thought about this dish in advance, soak the beans overnight.
- Cook the beans first: Before anything else, you want to cook the beans first. You want a lot of water when cooking dry beans, as the water will reduce by the time the beans are cooked. I use 5 cups of water to one cup of beans and cook for 30 to 40 minutes.
- Add the coconut milk: Once the beans are cooking, you are ready to add other ingredients. Start with the coconut. You want to give this a boil before adding the rest of the ingredients.
- Make the dumplings: Because this is a small amount of flour, it was easy to make the dough at this point. However, it’s better to knead the dough while the beans are cooking.
- Add everything else: Add the dumpling you just made along with the yam, pumpkin, carrot and scotch bonnet pepper.
- Flavour the soup: I sieve the soup mix to separate the little noodles from the powdered bit. I didn’t add the noodles to the soup because it would have caused the soup to thicken up. And besides, I already have flour dumplings in the soup. That’s enough carbohydrate for me. Mix the powdered bit with cold water, warm/hot water will cause it to bump.
- Leave it to cook: Once everything is added to the pot, leave to cook on medium to low heat. Stir occasionally to prevent burning.
Use Pressure Cooker To Reduce Cooking Time
Using a pressure cooker will help to speed up cooking time. I almost always use a pressure cooker when cooking dry kidney beans.
You don’t have to soak the beans beforehand, so I don’t have to plan ahead for this recipe.
Pressure cooking the beans will require a little less water, and 15 minutes of pressure cooking will get the job done.
Using Canned Coconut Milk And Canned Kidney Beans
If you are pressed for time or prefer using canned kidney beans and coconut milk, you can and still enjoy this amazing vegan red peas soup. It won’t be as good as if you’d used dry kidney beans and homemade coconut milk.
The advantage is that the cooking time is greatly reduced when using canned products. The beans are already precooked, and the coconut milk is ready made for you.
All you have to do is, add the right amount of kidney beans and coconut milk to the pot, along with all the other ingredients and leave to cook.
One 240g canned beans will work for the recipe below. I find that whole tin of coconut milk is too much for this recipe. I suggest using half to 3/4 of the can of coconut milk.
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Jamaican Red Peas Soup Without Meat
Equipment
- Pressure cooker (optional)
Ingredients
- 1 Cup Dry kidney beans
- 1 Cup Homemade coconut milk Can use canned coconut milk too
- 30 g (1.06 oz) Red onion Chopped
- 2 Garlic cloves Chopped
- Sprig of thyme
- 30 g (1.06 oz) Scallion Chopped
- 5 Pimento berries (allspice)
- 75 g (2.65 oz) Carrot Peeled and diced
- 124 g (4.37 oz) Pumpkin Chopped in cubed
- 150 g (5.29 oz) Yellow yam Peeled and chopped in cubed
- 1 Scotch bonnet pepper ***
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1 Pack soup mix ***
- 6½ water
Dumplings
- ½ cup Plain flour
- ¼ Cup Water
- Salt optional***
Instructions
Dumplings
- In a small bowl, add the flour and salt (if you are using salt).
- Little at a time, add the water and knead to form a soft dough.
- Separate into very small pieces and make four round flat dumplings and four long ones.
How to make the soup
- Wash the beans and leave to soak in cold water for 2 to 3 hours are more. If you are using a pressure cooker, not need to soak the beans.
- In a pot, pour the beans and 5 cups of water (you can use the water you soak the beans in), along with one garlic clove, the pimento berries and the salt. Put to cook on medium to high heat for 30 to 40 minutes or until the bean softens. If you are using a pressure cooker, you only need 15 minutes for the beans to cook.
- If you are using a pressure cooker, remember to let it cool before removing the lib.
- Once the beans are cooked, turn the heat to medium-low. Add the coconut milk, onion, thyme and scallion. Cover and bring to a boil.
- Add the carrot, pumpkin, yam, dumplings and scotch bonnet pepper. At this point, you will need more water, add another cup and a half. Cover and bring to a boil.
- In a bowl, add the soup mix and a little water whisk until the mixture is smooth. Pour the mixture into the soup pot. Cover and bring to a boil. Taste the soup if it is seasoned to your liken and add more salt if needed.
- Cover and cook for another 30 minutes or until all the food in the pot are fully cooked. Halfway through turn the heat to low to prevent burning. Stir occasionally throughout.
- Remove the scotch bonnet pepper and thyme stems before serving.
Notes
- If you wish not to use the soup mix, you can use two vegetable cube stock instead.
- I don’t put salt in my dumpling, but if you feel that the dumpling is tasteless without salt, add a pinch of salt when making the dough.
- Do not cut are burst the scotch bonnet pepper unless you like your food really spicy. Once the soup is cooked, remove it before serving.Â
Smoked paprika is a shot for this recipe, try it.
Lovely recipes and your pretty too.
Can’t get enough of this recipe. My favourite vegan soup these days.
Lovely recipes
LOVED this, but I did a few changes. I made it with pumpkin and taro root for the ground provisions and had to use habaneros because I can’t find scotch bonnets locally. The biggest change, though, is that I don’t like the texture of dumplings unless I’m sick, so instead of dumplings in the soup, I made fried bread to dip. Had soup, collards, and fried bread.
Hi Rachel, please to hear of your cooking experience with this recipe. I’m really glad you LOVE the soup and find ways to make it work for you.
What soup mix do you reccomend? Thank you
Pumpkin or vegetable soup mix. I usually use the pumpkin
This is just lovely. Its soothing, tasty and comforting. It will definitely hold you all day. My husband, who is a committed meat eater, and doesn’t consider it dinner unless there’s chicken involved, eats bowlfuls. Thank you.
Beautiful soup Thank you!
Your recipes always bring me back to my Dads home cooking. How I miss it so much! There’s no taste like the parents cooking.
Thank you for cheering me up.
How do you make homemade coconut milk?
Can I use veg broth?
Hi Anaa,
You sure can.