A Vegetarian Eid al Adha Soup for Your Table

Eid al Adha is right around the corner (Sunday) and is perhaps most well known as the “sheep holiday”.  Muslim families purchase a live ram and on the morning of Eid sacrifice the animal.  This is done as a remembrance of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son on God’s command.  At the last minute God replaced Ismail with a ram.  After the sacrifice families separate the ram into three parts; one for themselves, one to share with friends or family and one to donate to the poor.

Many women pride themselves on creating a wonderful meal on Eid, making many dishes that only make an appearance for this holiday.  One obvious staple is plenty of sheep.  This year we’re not making our own sacrificing but allowing a relative in Morocco to do the sacrifice for us.  We’ve consciously cut out a lot of red meat from out diet and neither MarocBaba or I would eat enough of the meat over the year to warrant buying one.  Frankly, I’m still pretty full of meat from our trip last month.  This got me thinking about others who are either vegetarian or just don’t like mutton.  There generally aren’t a lot of options for them on the Eid table.

I created this very healthy and filling soup to fill the void.  I used Saffron Road broth to speed up the cooking time and add a really great flavor.  I love Saffron Road because all of their products are halal and completely natural, but also many of them are gluten free.  I stopped using canned or boxed broths awhile ago because of the high sodium levels and blah taste but Saffron Road broths are really different – so much flavor.

There is a little bit of prep work to make this recipe but it’s well worth it.

Pre-cut all vegetables (love the purple potatoes don’t you)

Gnocchi can be made ahead of time and frozen until ready to use.

[tasty-recipe id=”29790″]

What’s on your menu for Eid?  Do you have other meat-free ideas to share with other readers?

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