Making soup? Easy!

Winter is around the corner in this city. The weather is still mostly sunny, but it’s cold. There is no better excuse to warm up with some warm home-made soup, is there?

Now I want to share with you a soup recipe I made and liked. I called it an “all-purpose” soup, because you can alter it to any type of soup. It’s like a basic soup that is eaten as it is, or turned into a chicken soup, and so on. Before you read on, I have 2 warnings:

• I’m allergic to onion and garlic, thus my foods never have these ingredients.
• I didn’t measure almost none of the ingredients, and I wanted more soup, to have some the next day. Making soup is no exact science for me.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 liters of water
• 3-4 medium potatoes
• 1-2 medium to small carrots
• 1-2  small bell peppers
• 1/4 cauliflower head
• salt
• any other ingredient (vegetables or condiments) you can think of that would work in a soup

METHOD

• Turn the stove top on, throw the salt in the water in a large enough pot, and put the pot on the fire.
• Peel the carrots, dice them and put them in the pot. The water doesn’t need to boil, there is enough time.
• Peel the potatoes, dice them to bite size and drop them in the pot.

• Clean the peppers, chop them and put them in the pot.
• Clean the cauliflower, chop it, and drop it in the pot.
• Add any other vegetable you selected above. Any condiments should be added some 10 minutes before you stop the fire.
• Let boil. It took my soup 45 minutes to completely boil.

MAKE A MEAT SOUP

Separately, clean any type of meat you want in your soup. Dice the meat and fry it in a pan with little oil. Grilled meat works fine too. The important part is to cook the meat well.

When the soup is done, put some meat pieces in a bowl and add hot soup on top for a serving.  You can cover the bowl for some 10-15 minutes and then serve.

Meatballs work just as nicely, but make sure they’re properly cooked, like above.

This “all-purpose” soup is great for families in which some members don’ t eat meat while others do.  My soup is red because I had put some 2 or 3 tablespoons of tomato sauce. These are added towards the end, with some 10 minutes before you turn off the fire.

Bon Appetit!

© Charly Cross 2013 - present. All rights reserved.

this entry was edited in May 2018, with pictures taken at various times.