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Hiya all

We in our house love homemade soup although it appears to be lentil all the time which we are soooo tired of.

Dh not to keen on scotch broth either so I am looking for some scrummy recipes if any you good ladies(and gents) have any.

Would love to do things like tomato and rice, carrot and corriander, leek and potato just dont know how.

We dont like peppers though

my recipe is this:

fry some onions and garlic.
add lots of vegetables (esp. cabbage and carrot, maybe with turnip, parsnip, potato,squash, brocoli(
add veg stock and a handful of lentils.
cook then whizz.

It is admitedly rather variable, but when it's good, it's really good.

The other one i like is as above but with lots of sweet potatoes (with or without another veg) and a teaspoon of cumin powder.

Ooooh, potage bonne femme is delish, it's carrots, leeks and potatoes and comes out as pale orange sludge. Cream of watercress great too, looks like pondslime. Cream of mushroom ditto, snot. Will dig out recipes in a min.

(Should I be composing menus do you think?)

SenoraPos! You've nicked my recipe.

If it's a pumpkinny sort of thing I often fry a bit of ginger and curry paste with the onions before adding other stuff.

Miso mixed in hot water and added in the final minutes makes a lovely stock.

Ginger and rosemary go well in carrot soup.

Tomato and Rice Soup
Serves 4

2 tablespoons oil
1 onion, chopped
1 teaspoon basil
1 bayleaf
1 tablespoon flour
1 carrot, diced
1 celery stick, chopped
1 teaspoon browm sugar
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
Large can chopped tomatoes
1 pint water or vegetable stock
1 clove garlic, crushed
Soy sauce, to taste
Salt and pepper, to taste
2 fluid ounces milk
3 tablespoons cooked rice
2 tablespoons roasted sunflower seeds, optional

Heat the oil in a large saucepan, saute the onion, garlic and basil for 5 minutes

Stir in the flour, add the carrot, bayleaf, celery, sugar, vinegar, tomatoes and water (or stock). Bring to the boil then reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

Remove from heat and cool slightly then blend with the soy sauce and salt and pepper. Add the milk and rice, return to the pan and heat through.

Serve sprinkled with sunflower seeds, if liked.


Leek and Potato soup - I don't bother with quantities, just fry up loads of leek, add even bigger loads of chopped potato and vegetable stock, simmer until the potato is soft then blitz in the food processor with a little milk or cream.

Even my vegetable-phobic 4 yr old loves this one.

Creamy vegetable soup with melting cheese and bacon

Bring 1.5 pts chicken or veg stock to the boil. add to it 12 oz each of cauliflower florets, chopped leek and diced potato. Grate in some fresh nutmeg, season and simmer, covered for 15-20 mins til veg are tender. Blend with hand-blender til smooth. Add half pint milk, 1 tbsp wholegrain mustard and 5oz grated cheddar. Serve topped with more grated cheese and some fried bacon pieces.

Potage Bonne Femme (this is not the recipe I use but the bulb has gone in my desklamp and copy-and-pasting too difficult. My recipe uses stock rather than water - I use organic veg stock cubes. Mine also says 3 med carrots, 3 med leeks and 3 med spuds but you can fiddle with quantities.)

A fine, absolutely classic and above-all, dead-easy French soup. Prepare & shred finely a large leek, chop 2 carrots, and dice 2 or 3 good sized potatoes. Fry the leek gently in a big lump of butter, add the carrot and the finely diced potato, season with plenty of freshly ground black pepper and a pinch of salt, add water to cover & cook for at least 45 minutes until all the vegetables are soft and pulped. Purée the soup with a liquidiser or Mouli if you have one. In this form the soup will keep a week in the fridge if it is sealed into a container while still hot. Before serving, adjust the liquid content by adding water or (better) milk. Heat well & serve with a dash of single cream &/or grated cheese on top. Do not store or reheat after adding the milk or cheese.

How about Tomato and Mint? Selection of veggies, chopped tomatos and a bunch or two of mint, put it all in the blender and then garnish with a sprinkle of chopped mint.You can also add some hot pepper/spices if you want.

don’t look for recipes - get creative and use whatever you fancy.
I tend to use a basic base of fried onion/leekor shallots and add whatever veg combo I have handy. I love carrots with creamy leeks and celery, the girls love pumpkin/butternut suash, DH loves leeks and celery with plenty of cheese swirled in near the end with a little creme fraiche. Once chosen veg have gone in, add stock - enough to cover veg and a little more. Decide if you want pulses/beans. Any will do - obv. check if they need presoaking. I love kidney beans in a general root veg one and plenty of bakc pepper - blitx to get a wonderful earthy dark coloured soup. Add tin of toms if you wish - nice with carrots, not so good with lentils.
Next cook away and think about seasoning. If adding pulses and beans avoid salting the soup until the end - will draw out moisture and make them hard. Think about the flavour - creamy leeks will enjoy a mild savoury seasoning with gentler herbs, tomato with fresh basil?, carrot obv coriander but also try smoked paprika. Butternut squash and a little chilli or maybe sweet parsnips with garam masala to make them just a little spicy.
Blitz/partial blitz or left lump - all variation helps ring the changes. Try stirring in a little bit of cold fresh salsa into a warm tom soup to add spice, or a little bit of soured cream with chopped chives on top of a carrot soup - homemade croutons made from parmasan and sundried tom bread etc etc
Finally, to add even more variety and ideas, try roasting your veg before adding to the soup pan to intensify flavour - so easy to do. Just put the carrots/peppers/toms/parsnips whatever onto baking tray raw, sprinkle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Med. oven temp for 30 mins or so until starting to caramelise - yummy. DH did this with onions once - left in low oven all morning and then turned into wonderful dark, sweet soup in afternoon..
We eat soup almost every day in winter and never ever get bored. Be adventurous, take risks and experiment. Try apple juice with your parsnip soup or a big slug of fresh orange and zest in with a tomato soup...
I could bore you to death with it so will stop now. Hope that gives you some ideas

Pondslime soup

Two good bunches of watercress rinsed, thoroughly, destalked and roughly chopped
2 medium potatoes, peeled and sliced
White ends of 4 slim leeks, sliced (use an onion if there are no leeks)
50g butter
1.5 ltr light chicken stock, vegetable bouillon or water
2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely sliced
150ml double or single cream, or yoghurt
Grated nutmeg to serve (optional)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preparation...

Melt the butter in a large pan, add the potatoes, leeks, garlic and watercress, season with salt and stir to coat with the butter.

Cover and sweat over a very low heat for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the stock or water, bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes or until the potatoes are soft.

Allow to cool and liquidise well, then stir in the cream or yoghurt and reheat gently.

Be careful with single cream and yoghurt as they can curdle if the temperature gets too near boiling.

Add a few good grinds of black pepper, then check and if necessary adjust the seasoning.

Serve plain, or with a drizzled twist of cream, a few scrapes of grated nutmeg and a sprig of watercress to garnish.

Hey Jan, can I use this Pondslime recipe in my cookbook?

Ginger Carrot Soup

1 tablespoon oil
1 onion, chopped
6 carrots, choppped
1/4oz fresh root ginger
1.5 pints Vegetable Stock
1 tablespoon basil leaves, torn
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in a large pan. Add in onion, carrot & ginger. Cook for 5 minutes until the onion is softened. Add the stock, bring to the boil, then cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

Allow to cool slightly then blend, with salt and pepper to taste. Reheat, and serve with basil leaves.

pondslime soup sounds great! do you reckon it'll work with spinach?

Mushroom soup

1 med onion
1 sml potato
225 g mushrooms
50g butter/marg
1 tsp thyme
large sprig parsley
710ml milk
salt & pepper

Chop veg. Melt butter in saucepan, saute onion until transparent. Add potato & mushroom & cook, stirring, for 2 mins. dd remaining ingredients, bring to boil, reduce heat, cover, simmer 20 mins. Allow to cool slightly then liquidise until smooth. Reheat to serving temp & adjust seasoning to taste.

Wigwam, can I use the ginger carrot soup receipe too? It looks delish--so you yours Senora!!

Of course you can!

Ah Thanks! I will say it is from WigWamBam then...

Please do, sunny!

SP, spinach should end up looking about the same as watercress (it's just like that pale-green film of algae you get floating on top of ponds sometimes). Not sure about the flavour though!

I do a really easy cheat's succotash with sweetcorn and butterbeans, tastes lovely and takes minutes. This serves 2.

Soften half a chopped leek in a saucepan with some oil, throw in a can of sweetcorn and a can of butterbeans, add half a pint of stock and simmer for 10 minutes, then add some milk to the required consistency.

scrummy recipes thanks ladies will be attempting these very very soon

Marking place

Any more nice recipes based on meat / chicken stock? All my soups seem to come out tasting the same so I could do with some inspiration.

These all look yummy. I'm going to make some tomorrow.