Benefits of Soup

For the health conscious, the vegetarian soups are not only healthy, they are full of protein, and will help you shed weight. Vegetarian soups are easy to make, delicious, and impressive if you are having guests for lunch or dinner. The best part is anything goes when combining vegetables. Create your own combinations based on what’s left in your kitchen. Making soup should bring out your creative side, so don’t be afraid to try new combinations. It is always better to make your experiments in small batches. Just write down what you are doing, so you can increase your amounts evenly if the soup is a success.

There are a number of different vegetable stocks and bullions available at the markets. I have used most of them, and they all work. Remember you can make vegetable soup with chicken stock, but it won’t be vegetarian. Vegetable stock can be made from scratch, however this is a lengthy process, and so is the soup itself. I highly recommend using one of the store bought varieties, especially if your just starting out.

Which vegetables to combine is totally up to you, so do a little homework, and make up some combinations you would like to try. Or, pick one you always wanted to try. One of my most popular soups at the restaurants I cooked in was created after Thanksgiving. I had a few leftover yellow turnips, and a bunch of sweet potatoes. Hence, the cream of sweet potato and turnip was born. I realize that cream soups are not for the diet conscious, but the soup was created based on what I had in the kitchen, and you can always leave out the cream. The point is, it became one of our best sellers, and based on the availability of the yellow turnips, (also known as rudebaga) it became a year round soup.

When cooking vegetables it is important to watch your cooking time. Sometimes a crunchy vegetable is desired, and, as in the sweet potato and turnip soup, sometimes the longer you cook it, the better. I like to include spinach in some of my soups, which requires hardly any cooking time. Potatoes are the opposite, the longer the better. Potatoes will act as a thickener when cooked for long periods.

Barley works well with vegetables, as do beans of any variety. If you decide to use barley, cook it first, and add your vegetables later on. Beans sometimes need to be soaked overnight, so read the labels, and happy soup making !