Now that the cooler weather is upon us its the perfect time to break out the stock pot and make some bit hearty soups.
After a couple of weeks holiday I was in need of a serious detox so put together this very satisfying vegetable soup to help my body recover. Of course I had to include some bacon not just for flavour, but to man the soup up a little :)
I keep seeing people at the office bringing in their cans of “Country Ladle” microwave soups and it just makes me shudder. Those things are full of salts and artificial additives and contain hardly any meat or real vegetables.
I’ve started making some big batches of soup on the weekend and freezing it for lunch during the week. You get a far superior product and you know that its full of fresh ingredients with actual nutrients.
This has got to be one of my all time favourite soups. The chunky vegetables and the tomatoey broth just go down so well with some toasted Turkish bread dressed with olive oil and fresh rosemary leaves.
I started with one of the soup packs you get see in the fruit shops (they are pretty economical), but added some extra ingredients as well. The soup pack had some fresh parsley which I didn't need for this recipie, so just save it for something else.
What you’ll need
1 soup pack which contained
- 1 brown onion, diced
- 2 celery sticks, diced
- 1 carrot, diced
- 1 potato, diced
- ½ Swede, diced
- ½ parsnip, diced
To this I added
- 2 rashers of bacon, diced
- 2 garlic cloves, diced
- 1 zucchini, diced
- a big handful of green beans, topped and tailed and cut into 1-2cm lengths
- 6 cauliflower florets (about ¼ of a head of cauliflower), diced
- A big handful of baby spinach leaves
- 1 500g bottle of tomato passata / sugo
- 1.5L chicken stock, vegetable stock or water
Chicken stock will give your soup a lot more body than just using water. This is actually one of the rare occasions where you will hear me say that you can get away with using stock cubes to save having to buy a big quantity of fresh chicken stock.
How to put it together
1. First, take a big stock pot and put it over a medium heat. Add a really good glug of Olive Oil (make sure the whole base of the pan is covered) and fry off the bacon until nice and crispy.
2. Add the onion, celery and carrot and cook for 5 minutes or until transparent. Give it a good stir every now and end.
3. Add the garlic and cook for a further 2 minutes until fragrant.
4. Throw in the Potato, swede, parsnip, zucchini, beans and cauliflower and stir to combine.
5. Add the tomato passata and stock. Give it a good stir to combine.
6. Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer (uncovered) for 90 mins.
7. If the soup starts to get too thick, just top it up with a little more water until it reaches your desired consistency.
8. When you are ready to serve, stir in the baby spinach leaves and let them heat through for 2 minutes until wilted.
9. Serve in big bowls with some crust bread and enjoy!
