AIBU to ask for your favourite vegetable soup recipes, to help me start to like soup?

[FollowYourOwnNorthStar]

Hi All,

I’m in the Southern Hemisphere, and it’s heading into Autumn. I am trying to lose weight, and get more vegetables in my diet. I typically start to eat more and put on weight in the colder months (hot chocolates!) and I would like to break the cycle this year. It occurred to me that a good thing to take for lunch in autumn/winter would be vegetable soup.

But I don’t like vegetable soup.

I was recently on holiday and had a delicious vegetable soup at a restaurant (which is what gave me this idea). I tried asking for their recipe, but no response. I have been thinking it over, and my solution is to make a resolution to make a new vegetable soup every week to try thought Autumn and Winter. Hopefully by the end I will have found a few I like.

But where to start???

Does anyone have any recipes (or links to recipes) for their favourites? If it helps, I seem to prefer thicker soups (eg with a roux or starchy vegetable blended to make it thick) and I’d like them to be all vege soups to ray and get me eating more vegetables (but I’m not adverse to receipts with meat in them.

Thank you in advance.

Thanks again to all for contributing. I’ve made a list and I’ll spend the next few weeks making them and report back!

Soups can be very fattening if you're not careful!

As far as vegetable soup, nothing can beat this classic of Delia. Bung it all in an ovenproof dish, slow cook in the oven, liquidise with a stick blender. Done. It is just how vegetable soup should taste

www.deliaonline.com/recipes/type-of-dish/soups/slow-cooked-root-vegetable-soup

Second Rousette as to the Delia recipe. It freezes well too, so I always have some on hand. The Good Food carrot and coriander is good too, but I used Garam masala last time, and that was even better.

Broccoli, cauliflower, a few small potatoes and stock. Makes a lovely soup. Very quick and easy.

I’ve just done a new one for me - chopped onions carrots and celery (we can buy this ready chopped in supermarkets over here), fried up with a bit of chopped chorizo. Add a tin of good tomatoes (or equivalent in leftover pasta sauce, tomatoes from the garden, whatever) and a tin of white beans and some really good stock and some leafy greens - I have kale and chard from the garden. Yum. Also very substantial.

I make chicken stock with the carcasses and bones of a roast chicken + leftover gravy and any suitable veg chucked into the slow cooker overnight with some water. Strain and freeze. If I can’t be bothered to make it I shove the carcass in a plastic bag and freeze it.

Place marking for later, just about to do a vegetable soup now.

Unless you have very tasty bone stock it is the veg that gives you the flavour ( stock cubes are quite salty so you don’t want too many). A lumpy soup would include a finely chopped whole head of celery and handfuls of chopped parsley, roughly grated carrots, onions, maybe chopped cabbage and /or red Lentils, barley, split peas, tomatoes.- filling and full of roughage.
Easy tomato soup is an onion chopped and a lb or two of fresh toms with the stalk bit removed, almost cover with water add stock cube, simmer 15 mins, liquidise when cool. Nice fresh tasting soup (served hot)

I don’t follow a recipe and find that as long as it’s mainly root veg (carrots, parsnips, squash or sweet potato) and it’s blended, it is always delicious as the root veg blended makes the silky texture. So I’d recommend you experiment. I make it from whatever I have in and knorr stock pots as I rarely cook a joint to make proper stock with, that’s just over complicating it if you don’t have the stock to begin with.

I second the recommendation for the bbc good food soups but I often find I need to up the spice a bit in the oriental ones. Delia is good too. To avoid the saltiness of stock cubes I buy the low salt version of Swiss bouillon powder.

Soup is good for a diet - there was a programme on the BBC some time ago where a doctor (Michael Mosley I think) did an experiment with the territorial army -one group had a roast lunch with a glass of water. The other had exactly the same blended into a soup. They then did 2 hours of exercise and they monitored the content of their stomachs and found that the soup group had much fuller stomachs as the blending makes the food slower to absorb. Just avoid too much potato, cream, coconut milk etc - pulses and tomatoes are lower calorie bases.

Some Soup like curry is best eaten the next day, because the flavours mature. I like lentil with garlic, or butternut squash, or Tom yam hot and spicy...

Garden Vegetable Soup by Alton Brown is the best vegetable soup I have EVER tasted! It's loved by the whole family, even the picky ones and the ones who don't like vegetables! It's divine served with a little fresh grated parmesan and some bake at home crusty bread.
www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/garden-vegetable-soup-recipe-1915670

Celery
Onions
Carrots
Leeks
Parsnips
Parsley
Soup mix (barley etc)
Add in vegetable stock and cook on low for a couple of hours. Towards the end of cooking add dumplings

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2390645/parsnip-and-ginger-soup

I don’t bother with the crime fraiche.

Lol autocorrect again

Thank you all again. I’ve been making a note of each recipe! I’m going to start next weekend with the Delia Smith simian recipe (as it was recommended twice!) and the Alton Brown one. Being in Australia I’m not entirely sure who he is, but I will find out!

Tom Yam soup has been recommended a few times too. This is not a soup I’m familiar with, so I will google, unless anyone has a tried and trusted recipe for it they would recommend?

And that tv show recommended by londonmummy1966 on the Territorial
army sounds v interesting! I will have to see if Incan find it online at YouTube or something.

One more! This is different to many of the others posted on here, most of which I've made at one point or another. I keep coming back to this one, though I also love a veggie Thai soup www.goodfood.com.au/recipes/white-onion-and-cider-soup-20111018-29wu2

Basic leek and potato...

Two medium (fist size?) potatoes, 1 medium carrot, four leeks, chicken stock.

Chop leeks small, grate carrot, grate potato, melt some butter in pan (or use olive oil) add veg, stir so all coated and cook for 10/15 minutes on very low heat. Pour in stock so covered (if you’re using home made stock, just top up with water.) leave to cook, low heat. Half an hour? Add salt and pepper. I blend it as I like a smooth soup but it’s fine lumpy too.

Some excellent suggestions here, will try some others.

Soup is my favourite thing ever! Celery & stilton, French onion, pea/mint /ham, leek & potato, minestrone, curried parsnip, tomato & pesto, gazpacho, courgette, carrot & lentil, summer vegetable, asparagus, watercress... If I've ever bought an ingredient, chances are I will have ended up making soup with it at some point. At one point when we were absolutely penniless, I made potato and lentil soup (it was not awful). Ditto the Christmas dinner leftover soup, with some spices added to give it a kick.

Soup is the easiest thing in the world to make - it's pretty much oil, diced onion, main ingredients, and stock (I just use stock cubes, because I'm a lazyarse and can't be bothered to make my own)