I am getting excited because we have entered soup season! Who doesn’t love a good heart-warming (or is it gut-warming) soup? I enjoy both creamy and chunky versions.
Soups have so many advantages:
- They are a great way of using up those close to expired vegetables lurking in the bottom of your fridge.
- They are economical and can make ingredients go a long way
- They are usually easy to prepare, but that, of course, will depend on the recipes that you choose.
- They are versatile and flexible. How many varieties are there? Google “soup recipes” and you get 672,000,000 hits! No doubt there are lots of double-ups but still, that’s a lot of soup.
- They are filling, especially with some nice crusty bread
- You can freeze them for later.
- You can add in all sorts of good for your gut ingredients.
I make lots of soup in winter. Lots! I always have the image of the Seinfeld episode with the Soup Nazi in my mind as I cook. I hear that fellow yell out “No soup for you!” but change it to “Yes! Soup for You!” A few years ago I even had the idea of doing a new blog based entirely on soup! I still might do that. It was provisionally entitled Sunday Soup Sessions.
Here are a couple of my favourites.
Harira (Moroccan lamb, tomato and lentil soup)
Lots and lots of good things in this soup. I am not sure if it would work so well without the meat.

Orange Vegetable Soup
I make up my own recipes and it’s a bit hard to give the precise list of ingredients for these.
A case in point is this pumpkin, sweet potato and carrot soup spiced with ginger and turmeric.
The ingredients and method could be roughly translated as
Ingredients
- Pumpkin – as much as you have depending on how much you want to make – cut into cubes
- Sweet potato (orange variety) – about half the amount of pumpkin – cut into cubes
- Carrots – about the same as the sweet potato – cut into chunks
- Stock and water – I would have used chicken stock but vegetable stock would be fine. How much…well that depends on how many vegetables you are using! At least a litre.
- Tumeric – powdered or fresh, grated
- Ginger – fresh grated
- Onion – at least 2 – sliced
- Garlic – 1 tablespoon-ish
- Olive oil
- Lime juice to serve.
- Feta cheese for garnish
Method
- Fry the onions and garlic in the oil till soft
- Add the turmeric and ginger and saute for 1 – 2 minutes.
- Add the veggies
- Stir around in the oil to coat and saute for 2 – 3 minutes
- Add enough stock to partially cover the veggies
- Put the lid on and simmer until the vegetables are tender. (maybe 30 minutes?)
- Use a stick blender to blend in the pot, adding more stock/water as needed to get the right consistency. Or transfer really carefully to your jug blender/mouli thingy and blend till smooth.
- Adjust seasoning
- Serve with lemon or lime juice and garnishes as you like.
Have you got any soup season recipes to share?