Thursday 24 January 2019

Super useful soup

Soup. It's a delicious and healthy lunch and great to have in the fridge. BUT if you buy it you have all the extra packaging involved - especially with those gourmet type soups which mostly come in a Tetra Pak or a big plastic tub. Even if you recycle them, that's a huge amount of extra resource used to produce and then recycle that packaging. Make you own and you can eliminate that completely.

Souper useful


Soup has so many uses - especially in a family environment. If you're weaning it's perfect for the smallest person in your family, whether you're going the spoon puree route, or baby-led when it's ideal for your little ones to dip bread in. Quite aside from a quick lunch or tea, it can be easily used as a pasta sauce or a gravy or sauce to pep up a simple meal with lots of hidden veg.

Now time is always the biggest issue that has us reaching for a bought product, but I think I've found the perfect solution with soup. First I make it alongside a main meal. Usually on a Sunday afternoon or evening. It's much more efficient and easier to simply chop up a few more vegetables while making a main meal, I leave it to cook while we have our dinner, then add any suitable leftovers.

Make sure you've got some good containers in which to store your soup, and if you do a big batch on Sunday it will feed the family for the week. You can always freeze some too for pasta sauces etc.

Homemade soup ingredients


You can make soup with pretty much anything, just depends what you have in abundance. Keep an eye out for reduced veg in your local shop of supermarket and let that flavour your soup and use up any leftovers. Last December I made a very tasty 'Christmas dinner' soup which gave us an easy hearty meal on Boxing Day with a bunch of the leftovers from Christmas Day.

Squash
A squash will make a good soup and can be combined with other ingredients to make different soups to your taste. The great thing about a squash is it will keep for a good while so it's easy to ensure you generally have one in your food cupboard.

Onions
You can make soup without onions, but they are a pretty good staple to add flavour, whatever variety of soup you're making. Leeks can do a similar job, garlic, tomato puree and herbs are other great ways to add flavour as is celery. Pea soup is a really easy option -  frozen peas, onions and stock alone will give you a tasty meal.

Leftovers
Leftover gravy, small portions of pretty much any meal, any veg nearing the end of its life, broccoli stalks etc are great and have the added bonus of reducing your food waste.

This yummy soup was made with onion, squash, broccoli, carrot, celery and a bit of left over mashed potato. It kept us going for a week. I didn't have any chicken stock this week so I used a Kallo stock cube.

Stock
Every time we have a roast chicken I simmer the bones to make stock and pop it in the fridge ready for soup (or risotto) production. If I don't have any of my own stock, I opt for Kallo's organic low salt stock cubes (there's a lot of salt in regular stock cubes). A dash of wine, Worcestershire sauce or anything you fancy really - experiment with your own combinations, and try to take a note of what works so you can re-create a particularly successful combination. Happy souping!

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