Soup is good! I wasn’t raised eating it, and it always seemed like such a strange thing to order in a restaurant until I was in my 20s and realized how much I loved it! My kids love soup, too, though my husband could probably take or leave it (or enjoy it only as a prelude to some slab of beef).
This month, having a regular homemade soup and bread night is one of my goals. I thought I’d pull together five of my favorite simple soup recipes so you can follow along if you like. Here’s what we’ll be eating for the next five Tuesdays (please remember I am not a gourmet cook — I am all about quick and easy! So if you are a fancy-shmancy type, these recipes may offend you. I apologize in advance!):
1. Chicken and rice soup.
- 15 oz. chicken broth (2 cans or one of those big box thingies)
- 4 C. water
- 1T “Better than Bouillon”
- 2 cut-up cooked chicken breasts
- 1/2 C chopped onion
- 2 carrots, cut in rounds
- 1-2 celery stalks, cut in bite-sized pieces
- 1 bay leaf
- 3 cloves garlic, sliced (or more if you love garlic)
- salt and pepper to taste
- 2 C cooked rice
- Olive oil
Heat olive oil in big stock pot over medium heat. Add onion and saute for a minute or two. Add carrot and celery and continue to saute until they start to soften a bit, maybe 3-4 minutes. (If you forgot you were supposed to pre-cook the chicken, you could add it at this stage and saute until cooked through. But you wouldn’t forget something like that, would you??)
Add garlic and saute 1 minute.
Add chicken broth, water, and Better than Bouillon. Stir to mix, and add chicken and bay leaf.
Let simmer for a good long time — an hour or more. If the liquid level reduces too low, you can always add more water and more bouillon if necessary. Add salt and pepper to taste.
15 minutes before serving, remove bay leaf, add rice, stir, and heat through.
Voila! Dinner!
2. Baked Potato Soup. I started with the recipe here, but I modified it so much that I wrote up my own version:
Photo from Potato Soup Recipe.
- 1 C leek, sliced
- 4 large garlic cloves, chopped coarse
- 2 T olive oil
- 3 russet potatos, baked, peeled, and cubed
- 3 cans chicken broth (you could make your own, of course, if you’re into that sort of thing which obviously I am not though I like to pretend I am)
- 1/3 C whole milk (yah, I know — WHOLE milk but it’s better than the heavy cream the original recipe called for!)
- 4 strips bacon
- 2T butter
- salt and pepper to taste
In a big honkin’ saucepan, cook the leek and garlic in the olive oil until the leek begins to soften. Add the broth, the cooked, peeled, and cubed potato (you really don’t want to forget to cook it first), and simmer.
While it’s simmering, cook the bacon, reserving the drippings (doesn’t that sound better than “fat?” I’m going to try that from now on. That extra around my waist is not fat, it’s drippings.) Set bacon aside to drain and cool.
Add the milk and butter and 2T of the “drippings,” adding more of any or all if you think it needs it. Simmer another 5-10 minutes or so.
Get out your immersion blender, (mine is similar to this one: KitchenAid KHB100ER Hand Blender, Empire Red
Serve with crumbled bacon bits and cheddar cheese.
3. Split Pea Soup. Not a fave with the kids, but John and I love it. This recipe is adapted from one I found at AllRecipes.com.
Cover, and cook until there are no peas left, just a green liquid, about 2 hours. If water level gets too low, add more liquid (water or broth) and stir to incorporate.
Once the soup is a green liquid remove from heat, and let stand to thicken. Serve and listen to kids complain about “booger food” and “disgusting lumps.”
4. Sausage Tortellini Soup. Another one of my made-up favorites.Heat onion in olive oil to soften in large stock pot. Add sausage and saute until brown. Add broth, water, and bouillon and stir to mix. Add bay leaf and garlic. Let simmer for at least 30 minutes, then add tortellini 15 minutes before the kids are hangry (hungry + angry = hangry). Remove bay leaf before serving to avoid comments about “foliage in my food!” Season with salt and pepper.
- 1 package Aidell’s Chicken and Apple sausage, cut in rounds
- 1/2 C onion, chopped
- 1T olive oil
- 15 oz. chicken broth
- 2 C water
- 1 T “Better than Bouillon” if you like a stronger flavor broth
- 2 C uncooked tortellini
- 1 bay leaf (I am really not sure if the bay leaf adds anything to my recipes, but it makes me feel gourmet, so I continue to use them)
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Garlic, chopped, as much as you can get away with and still have people share a house with you
5. Black Bean Soup. My sister-in-law makes a great black bean soup from an old Sunset Magazine cookbook. I couldn’t find it online, but this one seemed close. I’ll be making it later this month as an antidote to all the turkey and stuffing we’ll be eating!
Got any good soup recipes? Link me up, chica! (And if you have one of those 1970s or 1980s “Sunset Magazine Soups and Stews”), send it my way!
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