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About 10 years ago, I found an outstanding vegetable soup recipe on a blog called Cooking Classy. It delivers a savory, healthy taste. And, at less than 200 calories per serving, it’s perfect for people watching their weight, but it is very much not diet food in terms of taste.
It’s a soup that is special enough to serve guests, accompanied by a salad and bread. In fact, I originally called it “Holiday Vegetable Soup,” because it’s good enough to serve to company, on, say, Christmas Eve. How fancy you make it is up to the occasion you are making it for--will vegetarians and vegans be there? You’re covered. The version I’m posting today is vegan, but not intentionally so. We are semi-vegetarian or “flexitarian,” but we love dairy. We just didn’t need it for this soup.
We often use vegetable broth, rather than chicken broth, but both are great. You can sauté the vegetables in butter or olive oil or both. It’s good to sauté some of the veggies first, as directed below, but we’ve forgotten to do that, and just tossed most of the ingredients in, and it still tasted great. And you definitely could add diced cooked chicken into the mix if you’ve got some hungry carnivores at your house.
Sometimes we use vegetables from our farmers market, which add a special dimension of freshness, but we usually use supermarket produce, and it still tastes great. Feel free to adjust amounts for the ingredients or experiment with other ingredients. It’s a very friendly recipe. (Note: I've made a few changes to this recipe, but it's pretty close to the Cooking Classy original.)
Kate’s Favorite Vegetable Soup
2 cups of thin-sliced carrots
2 cups of diced sweet onion
3-4 stalks of chopped celery (must include leaves)
2 boxes low-salt chicken broth or vegetable broth (about 64 ounces)
2 regular size cans diced tomatoes (juice and all)
A few minced garlic cloves (or lots of garlic powder)
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 chicken or vegetable bouillon cubes
3 bay leaves
Poultry seasoning to taste (optitional)
About a quarter cup chopped parsley (optional)
3-4 medium potatoes, diced into roughly equal size
1 to 2 cups of each of the following frozen vegetables:
Corn, peas and green beans
Salt and pepper to taste
Begin by sautéing the onion, carrots and celery in heated olive oil, for a few minutes, until the onion begins to get translucent. Add the garlic and sauté for 30 seconds.
Next, add all of the broth, the potatoes, tomatoes, poultry seasoning, bay leaves, parsley (if desired), salt and pepper.
Bring to a boil and add the green beans. Lower to a simmer, and cook for about 30 minutes. Add the corn and peas and cook for five to 10 minutes, until the corn and peas taste done to you. This tastes great the next day.
May this soup enchant and sustain you!
Kate Wolford is the publisher of The Fairy Tale Magazine, and runs The Enchanted Press. The press recently published the Cinderella continuation novel, Glass and Feathers, by Lissa Sloan. Get your copy here.