It feels like autumn… Let’s have your soup recipes

I usually make onion soup or spicy parsnip soup but I’m bored of them.

What’s your favourite soup recipes?

Links much appreciated

Whatever-is-in-the-fridge soup, different every time. I don’t think I’ve ever followed recipe for it. Oh, no, I did for gaspatcho once, and that was really nice, but not very autumnal.

Useful contribution I’m sure…

Anyway, just bung some veg in a pot and see what happens. Always use onions and stock, everything else just guess. Add potatoes for thicker soup, don’t add potatoes for runnier soup

This time of year,all soup (IMHO)tastes better when you whack some rice or pasta into it ,bulk it up closer to stew/goulash.

:-)

One of my staples, but with extra chilli flakes, ground coriander and cumin. I also tend to grate the carrots, makes it easier to zzzh them up with the hand blender.

https://wemadethislife.com/slow-cooker-spiced-carrot-lentil-soup/print/34038/

Interested in a spicy parsnip soup, though.

Roast butternut squash, red pepper, 2 carrots and an onion. Fry some ginger for 30 seconds, add the roast veg and 1.5l veg stock. Bring to boil and whizz down with blender.

Carrot and coriander is lush, easy to make. Fry carrots first ftw. Blend when all in

Chick pea and tomato, fry chickpeas first. Blend when all together

Pea soup is lovely, just use frozen peas. Left over gammon if you like that sort of thing

Very easy … I just cooked some earlier

Boil a pot of water..

Add a pack of A1 brand ‘bak kut teh‘ Chinese herbal soup herbs.

Add 3 large bulbs of garlic

Add pork or chicken pieces (I used whole small chicken)

Slow boil or simmer until meat is thoroughly cooked

Then add salt, soy sauce, Oyster sauce and a little MSG to your liking.

That’s it the famous M’sia bak kut teh is done. This is a unique soup in Malaysia.

Eat with rice or whatever.

Note: this is a herbal soup with strong taste of ginseng and garlic.

My cheeky post night ride store cupboard winter soup:

Diced chorizo (optional)

1 tin mixed pulses / beans

Tomato purée

Vegetable bouillon powder/ stock cube

Chilli flake

Oregano (or basil)

Fry the chorizo in the bottom of the pan add drained pulses and the other stuff to the pan with about 1-2 mugs of water a bit more than covering the pulses.  Simmer for about 10 minutes while you take a shower and put warm clothes on (shower and change of clothes optional if not been riding in filthy winter slop).

Serve with bread or crackers while watching late night telly for an hour or so more than you originally planned ?

Artisan cookery it is not. Low effort and satisfying when you’re fresh in from freezing and filthy rides definitely. Your taste buds may vary.

Buy “The Soup Bible” …. Some great recipes in there

I’ll copy a few over in a bit.

I usually make onion soup or spicy parsnip soup but I’m bored of them.

Let’s have your soup recipes, then.  I’ve been trying to perfect French Onion Soup for ages and I don’t think it’s quite there yet.  It doesn’t help that I have little to compare it with, most use a beefy base.  Heinz is vegetarian but it is rank, I tipped it away after two spoonsful.

Buy “The Soup Bible” …. Some great recipes in there

Yup.  There is “The New Soup Bible” also.  I have both, same publisher but different authors.

One shallot, fried. One clove garlic, fried. Add teaspoon galangal paste. Drop in a chilli and some lemongrass. Beat and heat.. Add fish stock and fish sauce. Add more lime juice than seems sensible. Add a few broccoli florets. Add some rice vermicelli. Bubble away for a bit. Add some prawns and more chopped coriander than seems reasonable. Eat.

I’ve been trying to perfect French Onion Soup for ages and I don’t think it’s quite there yet.

Best veggie onion soup recipe I found, they do need the 8 hrs to cook down

https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/slow_cooker_onion_soup_03698/amp

Another lazy soup for me is Chinese tomato egg soup

This is “summer” soup but very easy to make so long as you have some tomatoes, eggs, chicken cube stock, cornstarch and sesame oil.

All done within few minutes and delicious.

@cougar – I usually take the Jamie Oliver recipe and then adjust to the ingredients at hand

https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/vegetables/english-onion-soup-with-sage-and-cheddar/

For parsnip soup I used very old BBC recipe and again adjust to whatever I can find in the kitchen. Similar to this one:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/spiced_parsnip_soup_with_10574

I just made a Thai influenced soup. Onion, garlic, ginger, red chilli, cumin, coriander, tumeric, loads of veg added in order of cook time (potato, carrot, courgette, runner beans, broccoli stems, spring onions) veg stock, miso, fish sauce, Thai basil.

Nicely warming but light and healthy and using up stuff from the veg patch.

Best veggie onion soup recipe I found, they do need the 8 hrs to cook down

Nicely, ta.

I don’t necessarily need a veggie recipe, I’ve been adapting meaty ones for decades. Rather, I’ve no fram of reference here as to what I’m aiming for. I’ve got something which *I* like but whether it even remotely tastes anything like FOS I’ve no idea.

It never occurred to me to use the slow cooker. That’s interesting.

I’ll post up my recipe in the next post.  What I tend to do is crib multiple recipes and distil my own out of them.  So say I have six recipes and five call for paprika then it’ll go in, of only one does then it won’t.  I then iterate from there, and once I’m happy then my barely legible scribbled notes get typed up.

French Onion Soup [January 2010]

800g onions, thinly sliced

80g butter

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 level teaspoon granulated sugar

2 tbsps plain four

1200ml stock

280ml dry white wine

1/2 tsp thyme

1 tsp Marmite

Bay leaf

2 tbsps Cognac

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Place the pan on a fairly high heat and melt the butter. When this is hot add the onions and garlic, and keep turning them from time to time until the edges of the onions have started to colour – this will take about 6 minutes. Then add the sugar, reduce the heat to low and leave the onions to carry on cooking very slowly for about 40-60 minutes, stirring occasionally to stop them catching.

Bring the heat back up, sprinkle in the flour, stir and cook for a couple of minutes.  Then pour in the wine and stir with a wooden spoon, scraping the base of the pan well.  Add the stock, thyme, Marmite and bay leaf.

As soon as it all comes up to simmering point, turn down the heat, then leave it to cook very gently, covered, for about half an hour. All this can be done in advance but, when you’re ready to serve the soup, bring it back up to a simmering, taste to check for seasoning and add a tablespoon or two of Cognac.

I just made a Thai influenced soup.

Thai Chickenless Noodle Soup is probably my favourite dish.  It’s all my own work and I’ve very proud of it.  Obviously it could be done with regular chicken but you’re on your own there, I’ve no idea.  I’ve posted it on STW before but, recipe in next post.

Thai Chickenless Noodle Soup [September 2010]

(Serves two hungry people)

75g creamed coconut

1L veggie stock (5x green OXO cubes or equivalent)

1 tbsp vegetable oil

2 cloves garlic, chopped

175g Quorn roast chicken strips [hard to find now, chunks are OK or slice some fillets]

1 tsp turmeric

½ tsp hot chilli powder

30ml (1 tbsp rounded) crunchy peanut butter

Juice of half a lemon (add other half to taste, don’t use bottled)

60g fine egg noodles, broken into ~6cm lengths

1 tsp dried / 1 tbsp fresh coriander leaf

Handful of spring onions, chopped

Black pepper

Garnish:

1 tbsp Desiccated coconut

1 tsp Dried chilli flakes

Dissolve the creamed coconut and peanut butter into the hot stock.  Thoroughly mix so that there’s no clumps.  Be patient, this can take a while.

Meanwhile, fry the chopped garlic in the oil for a couple of minutes, in a large soup pan on a medium heat.  When the garlic starts to brown, add the Quorn strips, turmeric and chilli powder.  Fry for five minutes, stirring constantly to prevent the Quorn from sticking.

Add the stock / coconut mix to the pan with the lemon juice.  Simmer partially covered for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the coriander, spring onions, noodles and a few twists of black pepper, then allow to simmer for another five minutes.

Whilst the soup is finishing cooking, make the garnish.  Fry desiccated coconut together with the chilli flakes in a dry frying pan, stirring constantly until the coconut turns brown but not burned.

Decant the soup into bowls, and sprinkle with a little of the garnish.  Serve with the rest of the garnish separate to allow seasoning to taste; chilli flakes are hot.

Butternut Squash, Sweet Potato and Carrot Soup.

This isn’t a recipe exactly, I haven’t typed it up because it kinda doesn’t need to be.  Quantities are “a la cupboard” measurements, it’s near-impossible to screw up and it’s a tasty autumn/winter warmer.

Dice a couple of onions, chop/mince a couple of cloves of garlic and fry them together in a lug of oil with a pinch of salt and half a teaspoon or so of sugar.  Do this on a low heat, stirring occasionally.  We want the onion soft and translucent, not brown and crunchy.  (This is pretty much my de facto starting point for soup).

Meanwhile, peel and dice carrots, sweet potato and squash in about equal amounts.  I cut the squash into maybe 2cm cubes and the others ~5mm because they’re denser and take longer to cook.  Off the top of my head, 1 squash, 2 sweet potatoes and 3 or 4 carrots will yield about 250g of each vegetable; I may be way off here but it really doesn’t matter so long as they’re broadly in the same quantities.  Chuck these in the pan, turn up the heat and fry until they’re just starting to soften.

Add stock.  I obviously use veggie stock, I suppose chicken might work(?) but veg stock has a less dominant flavour than say beef.  You want about twice the stock to individual veg quantity, so for 750g of veg as above I’d add 500ml of stock.

Season and spice.  The world’s your mollusc here, we’ve essentially got a vegetable soup base to play with.  A bay leaf is rarely a poor choice in soups.  You could add coriander to make Millionaire’s Carrot & Coriander Soup.  A half to a full teaspoon of cumin gives a nice warmth.  Rosemary and thyme are happy bedfellows.

Simmer until it’s all squishy, take off the heat and then have at it with a hand blender until it’s coarsely blended.  For a creamier soup add single cream or milk, at most you want about half the single veg unit so 125ml here.  Or you could omit this step and drizzle a swirl of cream onto the top of each bowl.

Variations: Use slightly less stock and chuck a tin of chopped tomatoes in there.  A chopped red pepper works.  If you’ve got the oven on, roast a bulb of garlic and substitute it for the chopped cloves (this is really good but it’s not worth running a whole oven for an hour for the sake of one bulb, though of course you could roast the veg instead of frying too…)

I’ve never made exactly the same version of this twice but I’ve yet to make a stinker, it pretty much makes itself.

That tomato and egg one Chewkw posted sounded good so I made it for lunch. I used veg stock instead of chicken.

Tips for anyone else doing it: use less water than it says. Add a little bit of spice, maybe some chilli oil or something. It’s definitely not 4-5 portions, it’s 2 and that’s if you have toast with it.

It tasted nice though, will do it again with above modifications

Sweat off equal quantities of coarsely chopped onion, celery and carrot with some lo-salt and white pepper.

When soft add a few chopped up tomatoes. Over-ripe are best.

Chuck in some red lentils and mix around.

Add in some (ideally home made from a leftover chicken carcass) stock and a bit of full fat milk.

Bring to the boil until everything has softened.

Let cool and liquidise.

Season to taste. Enjoy.

Chuck in some red lentils and mix around.

I cannot for the life of me cook red lentils.  I either end up with crunchy or slurry. Though I suppose if you’re liquidising them it doesn’t matter.

Sounds a bit bonkers, but trust me on this one, it’s bloody lovely!

Arbroath smokies and scottish cheddar soup

50g butter
2 medium onions, finely chopped
350g potatoes, peeled and chopped
1.2 litres water
1 pair of arbroath smokies (or kippers or smoked mackerel) , skinned, boned and flaked
175g mature scottish cheddar cheese
125g carrots coarsely grated
1 green pepper, coarsely grated
2 tbsps double cream
salt and freshly ground black pepper

garnish: 2 tbsp finely chopped flat leaf parsley

Cook onion gently in butter till soft.  Add potatoes and water. Cover and simmer gently for 20 mins until veg are tender. Cool a little, then purée with 2/3 of flaked fish. Return to clean saucepan and reheat gently, stirring in cheese, carrots, green pepper, remaining flaked fish and double cream. Taste for seasoning. Serve sprinkled with parsley.

I always sweat any soup in butter for 20 mins first. Add stock, bring to the boil and use the slow cooker for half an hour to an hour or two.

All our soups just have an onion and potato base, then add whatever else you have in the larder. My favourite is watercress (no stalks).

I usually throw in half a small turnip in most soups for extra veggieness

I’m such a rebel

It never occurred to me to use the slow cooker. That’s interesting.

I’ve cooked it loads of times in the slow cooker, it’s fantastic. Fair warning though: your house will absolutely stink of onion afterwards. Personally I don’t particularly care, but YMMV as they say.

Moroccan chicken soup, I think from the soup bible recommended above.

The whole thing starts on Sunday with a roast chicken dinner, on Monday make a stock from the bones in the slow cooker, bit of onion, garlic, chilli flakes, paprika, cumin in there.

Tuesday make the soup, butter or oil in a pan, simmer some chopped onions and garlic, add a tablespoon or two of flour, then add some combo of harrissa paste or sriracha, then paprika, cumin, then optional lemongrass if you have it, salt, pepper, and toast that for a few mins.

At this point add the stock and an equal amount of passata in there, then the recipe says chickpeas,but we tend to go kidney beans or ‘taco beans’ mix in there, some peas and sweetcorn, and the shredded left over chicken from the roast.

Then finely chop a ton of coriander and stir that through not long before serving, keeping some back to sprinkle on when you serve.

We put a spoon or two of rice in each bowl when serving if we aren’t on carb avoidance diets.

Sometimes we add chorizo at the point of adding the spices to the simmering onions, sometimes we add spinach when adding the beans, sometimes we add extra sriracha, tobacco, chilli’s near the end, it’s all good, and if you were doing a roast on Sunday anyway it’s pretty cheap to make this with the leftovers.

The French onion soup above is another one we do and is amazing, forms the basis of any sausage casserole in this house now too.

Will try some of the other recipes in the thread now the weather is turning