Perfect for a chilly day, this delicious, nutritious, and hearty Persian soup will nourish you from the inside out. And it only gets better with leftovers when the flavors get all good and married!
To celebrate the winter solstice (AKA Shabeh Yalda) I’m posting the recipe for my quintessential Persian dish for this time of year.
I can’t tell you how much I love this soup and frankly I don’t really have the energy it’d take to accomplish that right now either. For one, I won’t be able to express myself and the way I feel about this soup enough to do it justice—it’s just really that special to my food heart. Oh, and damn delicious like you can’t even imagine.
And two, I’m running on 6 hours of sleep fewer than I actually needed last night so that I could be all packed and ready before heading over to my early lab meeting and then commuting to the airport so that I could wait for hours at my gate for the delayed airplane. I need some sleep. So. Badly.
But this here post is all about aash reshteh and all its delicious gorgeousness, and not about the most common airport woes experienced.
Aash reshteh literally translates to Noodle Soup. But …OK. Let’s stop right here because this is the biggest failure in naming a food, ever. There’s a ton of bountiful goodness going on in this soup and at the very least sure, there are noodles in the dish. But who cares, because the good stuff in my opinion are all the fresh herbs, tomatoes, garlic, variety of beans, and savory little beef meatballs—hence the really, really long title I gave it up above (and so I succeeded in achieving the opposite kind of food naming failure with that!).
So for other Persians that come across this recipe, yeah, this might not be your mama’s aash reshteh. It definitely is my mama’s aash reshteh and that’s because my family is from the Azerbaijan region of Iran. So the big difference is that we add little meatballs as well as some tomatoes and tomato paste. Typical Persian aash reshteh has more of a green color and Azeri aash reshteh has more of a red color, thanks to the tomato.
We enjoy topping the soup with a little mixture of fried onion, garlic, and mint and then the soup turns into something truly divine.
This soup is incredibly full of anything and everything you’d want or need in a meal and I actually cannot think of a healthier (whatever your definition may be of that) dish right now. Maybe that’s because my brain is currently broken (still waiting on that flight to arrive so I can catch some zzzzz’s—and probably won’t since I’m lame on a plane like that), but honestly, I have more than a hunch that it’s just the truth, regardless.
You guys are in for such a treat with this one. Noush-e jaan (nourishment for your soul)!!
Beef & Noodle Soup with Beans, Tomatoes, and Herbs (Aash Reshteh Azeri)
Ingredients
- 48 oz bone broth/chicken broth/vegetable broth 6 cups (my nutritious and delicious bone broth recipe)
- ½ cup dried lentils that soaked in water for at least 10 minutes
- 1 lb ground beef
- 2½ large white or yellow onions ½ of an onion should be puréed in a food processor or shredded with a box grater, while the other 2 onions should be chopped
- 5 tsp sea salt
- 2 tsp black pepper
- 2½ tsp turmeric powder
- 1 cilantro bunch washed and chopped in food processor
- 1 bunch parsley washed and chopped in food processor
- 1 bunch scallions washed and chopped in food processor
- 3 tbsp ghee or beef tallow
- 6 oz tomato paste 1 small can
- 5 oz fettuccine pasta noodles approximately ⅓ of a package
- 1 ½ heads of garlic minced
- 2 tbsp dried mint
- 8 oz chickpeas approximately ½ can; if using dry, make sure to soak for several hours before rinsing and tossing into the soup
- 15 oz red kidney beans 1 can; if using dry, make sure to soak for several hours before rinsing and tossing into the soup
- 20 oz cherry/grape tomatoes 1 small package
Instructions
- Add broth to a large pot over high heat and add enough water to fill half the pot with liquid.
- Add lentils (as well as kidney beans and chickpeas if not from a can; otherwise add the canned beans later) to pot of boiling broth/water, bring heat down to medium and close lid to cook.
- In a bowl, combine ground beef with the ½ puréed onion, 3 teaspoons (1 tablespoon) sea salt, 1 teaspoon black pepper, and 1½ teaspoons turmeric. Form into small, ½-inch sized meatballs and drop them into the soup, one-by-one.
- Add cilantro, parsley, and scallions.
- Over med-med-high heat, add ghee to the bottom of a pan. Add 2 chopped onions and fry until golden-brown, mixing occasionally to prevent burning (about 10 minutes). Once fried, tilt pan to drain the excess oil to one side of the pan with the onions on the other/higher side.
- Mix in tomato paste to pot of soup.
- Add ¾ of the fried onions to the pot of soup and reserve the other ¼.
- Break the fettuccine into approximately 3 inch-long pieces and add to pot.
- Add ¾ of the garlic to the pot and reserve the other ¼.
- Add 1 ½ tbsp dried mint to the pot.
- Add chickpeas, kidney beans, and tomatoes.
- Add enough water to achieve your desired ratio of liquid to other ingredients. Add 2 teaspoons sea salt, 1 teaspoon black pepper, and 1 teaspoon turmeric powder to pot of soup.
- In a small pan over med-low heat add the leftover ghee or tallow from frying onions. Then add leftover fried onions, garlic, a pinch of turmeric, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Fry just for a minute or two while mixing. Add ½ tbsp of dried mint and immediately remove pan from heat. Garlic and mint will burn if left on heat.
- Soup is ready once noodles have cooked through. Serve each bowl with a tablespoon or so of the onion/garlic/mint mixture right on top. Enjoy!
Nutrition
In celebration of the winter solstice today (AKA Shabeh Yalda), check out more awesome winter dishes from some of my fellow Persian bloggers!
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What a beautiful, comforting ash’e reshteh (Azeri style) for Shabe Yaldā! Gorgeous photos! Happy Shabe Yaldā! ~ Fae.
Thank you, Fae and Happy Shabe Yalda to you too! This aash is my mother’s recipe and it’s definitely my go-to comfort food, especially on a cold day! 🙂
WOW this beef noodle soup looks incredible. Seriously after this post, all I am craving is soup! Pinned!
Thanks Thalia! Hope you give it a go! It’s a family favorite for us! 🙂
This Aash looks delicious and different from what I’ve had before, can’t wait to try it!
I made this beef noodle soup last night and i must say it was wonderful! The fresh herb taste was delightful. I was afraid that the garlic would be a little heavy for our taste, but it was perfect. We had it again tonight and it seemed to have just gotten better overnight. We added a little dollop of sour cream and served it with toasted pita bread. Delicious!! This recipe is a keeper, will make it again with the cold weather ahead. Thank you so much!
You are so, so welcome and thanks so much to you, Katherine!! That’s SO cool that you tried it and I’m THRILLED that you guys enjoyed it! Yeah, it definitely may seem a bit garlic heavy as you’re making it but it does dilute out a bit with all the liquid and ingredients, and also, adding it in towards the end of the cooking process helps to keep it a little more on the mellow side. And I absolutely love that you added sour cream to it and ate it with pita bread because that’s almost exactly the way so many Persians do it as well. Traditionally, people can add whey (or yogurt) to aash reshteh (especially to the other, more typical, kind of aash reshteh that I made mention of in the post). And aash reshteh is commonly served with fresh bread (especially Persian sangak bread—to die for!). So you really knew what you were doin’ there, Katherine! 😉
Thank you so much, Homa joon! I hope you give it a try and let me know how it turns out if you do! It’s definitely not the traditional Fars aasheh reshteh but it’s traditional for us Azeris! This is my Persian mama’s family recipe and I love it dearly 🙂
Bita this looks SO AMAZING!!! And I’m chuckling over ‘worst name for a dish ever’. So true! There’s nothing better on a cold winter day than Asheh Reshteh – and thank you for teaching us about the Azeri version. I will definitely be making it this winter. xoxo
Thanks so much, Ahu!! Isn’t it just the dumbest name for a really yummy soup? And I agree, it’s the best thing for this time of year! 😀 xoxo!
Love this! My mom is from Azerbaijan as well. This aash-e rested sounds so delicious and soothing. I can’t wait to try this. Thanks so much for sharing and I hope you finally got a much deserved sleep!
Thank you so much, Naz! I definitely got my sleep that night and I felt a million times saner in the morning haha! I hope you like the aash! Is your mom’s aash reshteh similar? I know everyone does it differently 🙂 Let me know how it goes if you try it!
My mother in law is from Tabriz but their Asheh Reshteh is completely different. No tomatoes, no tomato paste but there is carrot and white cabbage. It seems Asheh Reshteh is much more complicated, even in Azerbaijan.
This is very, VERY true; but not of Aash Reshteh alone. It’s actually the case for just about every Persian recipe out there. Every family makes it their own way. It’s not just regional, that’s for sure. This is my family recipe, passed down from generations back.
You say to boil half a large pot of water along with your broth. How much water would that be? I would love to try this recipe and do not want to mess it up.
Hi Augusta (love your name btw)! So grab a large pot and just go ahead and add water to just about half the full volume of the pot. Then add the broth. Don’t worry about it not being just right. It’s an old family recipe and so naturally, it’s not meant to be very precise. But I would say that you can err on the side of less water so that you can add more later if you want. 🙂 I hope that helps, Augusta. If not, definitely let me know and we’ll figure it out better for ya.
Thank you so much for the recipe and your response. I can’t wait to try this soup. That is the way my mother-in-law learned to cook the old family recipes – ‘eyeballing’ and tasting. We have to watch her and take notes because she can’t exactly tell us.
That’s exactly how it is with my mother too :). So I ended up sort of the same but I realize that for the blog, it’s not much help and it can be frustrating when people are trying their best to recreate a recipe and obviously they want it to turn out right. So I bought measuring tools and I try my best to translate amounts properly but sometimes it just works better to say “eyeball it” sort of like in this case ;). Good luck Augusta! Tell me how it goes and take a pic if you can. I’d love to see! 😀
This looks soo delicious, I can taste it already! My husband is Azeri & Persian descent and I can’t wait to make this for him (and me!!) He has only eaten the traditional “Persian” foods and he doesn’t know much about his Azeri roots; he was born here. Hopefully this soup will inspire him to look into the more northwestern side of his ancestry.
That’s so sweet of you to guide him in this search of his heritage! I hope you both will enjoy this beautiful dish. It’s the best soup of mah life! 😉