Weekly Lists #7: Fall is the Season for Soup

Every Wednesday, I post a list of random stuff. This week: 5 great soups!

Not to continue last week’s theme or anything, but (another) great thing about fall is the fact that it allows for such great food. Now, personally, I’m a strict adherent of the fact that you’re supposed to have at least one cup of soup a day from September until February (at least!) but when you’re drinking soup that often, it can get quite hard to come up with the inspiration to make something new! As such, here are now: 5 delicious soups (technically, there’s more, but I’m sure you’ll figure that out in a bit yourself)

1. Creamy Tomato Soup

Recipe and photo credit: thedomesticgeek

This is the soup that kick starts all other soups, here in Belgium, and as such, I basically cannot remember ever not having known and/or drank it. This recipe is really simple and requires more time spent waiting for it to cook already than anything else: you take your tomatoes, slice them, throw them in with some water, and wait until it’s boiling. Next come your herbs (pepper, salt, garlic), and cream, you wait for it to thicken and yet again: done! For this one especially, I like to roll tiny meat balls and let them cook in the water first. If you then fish out the meatballs (once they’re floating on top, they’re done) and add in the tomatoes, your soup will have a delicious taste without actually having to add too many herbs!

2. Julienne Soup

The other foundation of soup-hood, probably, and it’s another really basic recipe: take every type of green vegetables you know (just about) as well as some carrots, dice them all up really finely, let them cook and add your herbs – and you’re done! As you can see, it’s stuffed with veggies, and although some people let the veggies stew in a bit of butter first, I prefer mine fat-free (excellent guilt-free snack: check!)

3. Pumpkin Soup

I mentioned this one in my weekly list from last week as well (5 reasons why fall is the best), but I seriously love pumpkin soup – it’s such a typical fall-flavour, and (although you do need some prowess to actually get the bloody thing cut into pieces) yet again you don’t actually need to do that much. (And if you’re really lucky, you don’t need to do anything because your dad makes it!) I probably love this recipe most, because it’s so creamy and soft:

Just a small hint: if you’re going for pumpkin soup, always make some croutons and add them right before serving – it seriously just lifts it to a whole other level!

4. Green soup

Now I know what you’re thinking – isn’t this just the same as that first one? Let me be the first to tell you: no it isn’t. I know quite a lot of people who can be quite picky about their vegetables, and this is basically my way of getting them to eat their greens anyways. I have as of yet to encounter anybody who doesn’t like this soup, and it’s (yet again, seeing a theme yet?) not that difficult to make!

You just take celery, courgette, leek and broccoli and cut all of them up – it doesn’t have to be into small pieces, you’ll be blending it afterwards, but just enough that you can fit all of it into one big pot! As for proportions: I basically just take most of whatever I can find cheapest at the store, there are no particular prerequisites!
Put all your vegetables into one pot and add in a little bit of vegetable stock (about 3 cm – you don’t need a lot of fluids yet). Then, put the lid on, and put the fire on medium-high, so that you can basically steam the vegetables. After about 10 minutes, you’ll see that the broccoli and celery are starting to get soft (no need to care all that much about the other veggies, by the time those two are soft, the others will be almost mushy).

At this point, you want to add in milk until half of the vegetables are covered. Lower your fire to low and let it cook for 5 more minutes. Now, take the pan off the fire, and blend the lot. Once you’ve reached a smooth consistency (if necessary, you can add some more milk!) all you have to do is season it to your liking, and you’re done!
Because there is celery in there, you don’t want to leave it out for too long, so I’d advise you to freeze this one – you’ll have a yummy, healthy soup ready to go whenever!

5. Onion Soup

This is definitely a case of ‘last but not least’. This one may just be my favourite soup ever. It’s very much a taste you have to like, though (if you don’t, you probably will never), but if you do like it: watch this recipe, it’s perfect:

So, there you have it! 5 of my favourite soups! Do you love a nice cup of soup in the evening as well? Do you have a different recipe that you think is much better? Let me know below!

-Saar