My soup for lunch today involves discounted vegetables. I buy them all the time since my little garden just isn't big enough to be real self sufficient yet. The problem with discounted vegetables is that they have to be eaten or processed...soon! Today I had a package of mixed fresh vegetables (broccoli, carrots and snow peas or podded peas), and a couple of cauliflower. I will blanch and freeze one cauliflower (if I can fit it in the freezer) but the other one I put in the soup with the mixed vegetables. I also had a can of water chestnuts. I love water chestnuts but never get them. This can was at the Dollar Store so I got it.
I am not much of an all vegetable person so I added meat. I put in one jar of my home raised and canned chicken with its juice and another quart of home canned stock. I have made soup with just water but home canned stock (NOT STORE BOUGHT) is just an essential to getting a good soup. Just absolutely not the same without it.
Salt is the other ingredient it can't do with out and it is a bit more than just a sprinkling, at least for my soup anyway. We are used to canned soups with lots of salt in it and if it isn't there, it just doesn't taste the same.
I also like onion in my soup. Almost all my soups have onion. Since I have not had a lot of luck growing onions, I should probably be dehydrating a bunch of them to stock up but I hadn't thought about it until today.
Other than that, today I added pepper and sage. Pepper just because I always add it (and yes, I do have a good bit of pepper stocked up) and sage because it was chicken and vegetable soup. Sage from your plant outside tastes totally different from sage in the little jar at the store so grow it if you can.
Simmer it until everything is done.
Anyway, here is the chicken vegetable soup:
It was excellent!
I share your views. Soup is easy and GOOD. And nutritious too. As you say, the key to a good soup is good home-made stock. We always make stock from the carcass of a roast chicken - though I have been known to buy a pack of chicken wings just to make stock with. Just recently we have been having some really good soups made with home-grown tomatoes, but unfortunately today we used the last of this year's tomato crop (*sob*)...
ReplyDeleteI used my last jar today :( but I do have three more chickens to go. I don't think it will be tomorrow though as I think this weekend I will be taking a self sufficiency vacation, lol.
DeleteHomemade broth makes all the difference. It is so much better than canned.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure how they make stock from the stores but to me it is favor-less which defeats the whole purpose of using stock.
Deletewholeheartedly agree with you on the homemade soup...and the homemade stock/broth too...lol, the first two years of serving in the u.s.navy, my mother would send me a $5.00 bill at the end of the month with a little note that said to go buy soup...back then (1971) five dollars bought alot of soup in a can..you could get at least five cans of campbells soup for a dollar then..so i would always purchase a good loaf of italian or french bread and a hunk of cheese too. but over the years, i have learned to make good soup and to make lots of it..usually, when i make soup i almost always can half of it...lol, my husband says it is like opening a good vintage wine as no two soups are exactly alike. :)
ReplyDeleteExactly! Soup used to be cheap (though I was quite young in '71, I do remember when it was cheap). My soups are the same way, no two are alike. I will not can this one because it has broccoli and cauliflower in it but I may freeze some so I can have what is leftover for lunch all next week.
DeleteAgree home made soup is the best full of flavour and goodness
ReplyDeleteBecky, that soup looks so good! I could eat a bowl of that right now, and I'm not even hungry! I like how you made it with those ingredients! Blessings from Bama!
ReplyDeleteQuick, homemade delicious! Hard to beat. I'm not yet confident in my stock canning procedure, will have to give it a go again.
ReplyDelete