How to Make Nutritious Soup
Soup making is easy and fun and best of all, requires no recipe. The only reason to use a recipe is to get ideas but soup recipes (unlike baking a cake which is unforgiving on the ingredients and quantities) are very flexible. Substitute or skip almost any ingredient.
Good food starts with good ingredients. Soup is no different but can use some produce which is on the edge of its shelf life.
4 Things make a good soup:
1 - Vegetables. Choose virtually any. If they are cruciferous like cabbage, cauliflower or brocoli though, cook them separately and add them right at the end. Tomatoes, carrots, celery, lettuce, squash, pumpkin, eggplant, green beans, yam etc all work perfectly.
2 - A thickener (optional). Oatmeal, barley, rice, groats and potatoes are all great thickeners.
3 - Protein (optional). Any meat, fish,beans, lentils etc (dried beans work great)
4 - Herbs and spices. Choose just a few and keep them simple. This is where true creativity comes in. Experiment and over time, you will find a few combinations that you love. Some of my favorites include - a simple bay leaf(combines with almost anything), curry powder, cumin(combines well with most others), basil, pepper flakes, tabasco sauce, rosemary, thyme(the latter 2 combine well together) etc.
How to Make it:
Clean and cut up the vegetables. Put them through the blender if you want to. This is best for leafy vegetables like lettuce and spinach.
Just add water and let it simmer. A slow cooker works great but so does low heat on the stove. You do not need soup stock as the vegetables will create the stock itself as it cooks. Anything dried like dried beans or rice will absorb water so bake sure to add enough and to stir occasionally to make sure there is enough water and it does not get stuck. I like to simmer it for a few hours on low heat. If I am in a hurry, I add boiling water to start it or start it on high and turn it down once it is boiling.
Soup is a great way to use leftovers too.