Vegetable Soup

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Today I’m making a big pot of vegetable soup for a meal at church to celebrate Ash Wednesday. I’m doing it on the stove top, but I have Instant Pot instructions on my website. The recipe also includes instructions on making frozen soup mixes (so you only have the veggies you like). You can check it out here. 

 Today's plan, though is to make “clean out the freezer” vegetable soup. This means using the ends of bags of frozen vegetables that gather at the bottom of my freezer drawer!

I also have two quart jars of vegetable soup I made and froze earlier in the year. These will be my starter.  But if you don’t have vegetable soup in your freezer, don’t worry. Everything else will make a great soup‼ In that case my starter would be broth, either homemade or store bought. 

I like to add canned tomatoes to my soup. If you don’t like tomatoes in your soup, just leave this out. Other things you might add are frozen corn, frozen peas, frozen black-eyed-peas, other beans, carrots (fresh or frozen), bell peppers, green beans (fresh or frozen), Onions (fresh or frozen), leeks, potatoes, cabbage, celery, okra, etc. The sky is pretty much the limit. If you like it in your soup, add some. 

Add all the veggies to the starter. Cut them into small cubes if they are whole. Remember that for the perfect veggie soup, you need to get several veggies on each spoonful. If you put big carrot slices, they will be delicious, but that would be all you could fit on your spoon. What you really want to see in a spoonful of vegetable soup is a couple of carrot cubes, a pea, some corn, a tomato bit… something like that. 

Some people like a "vegetable stew" which would have less broth. I like broth, so I make it brothy. Both ways are delicious. I wanted about 2 gallons of soup so I used about a gallon of broth and a gallon of veggies along with 2 lg cans of diced tomatoes. 

Once everything is in, let it get hot through and cook for an hour. Then taste and adjust the seasonings. 

Several things you could add to enhance the flavor would be:

  • Granulated garlic
  • Powdered onion
  • Salt and pepper
  • Turmeric
  • Dried herbs of your choice (I really like Herbes de Provence)
  • Apple Cider Vinegar (if it needs a little tart)
  • Lemon or lime juice (also for tartness)
  • A bouillon cube or teaspoon of paste (this if the overall flavor is lacking)
  • a little butter or sugar if your soup has some bitterness to the flavor
  • Tomato Juice (or V8 if you need to add some volume)

Continue to let it cook very slowly for several more hours. You can taste again once it has had another hour or two and make further adjustments. 

Vegetable soup is a soulful dish. It should be flavorful and warming. It should welcome travelers home after a long day. It should speak of hospitality and comfort.

Serve it with some bread and it is love in a pot. 

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