With the start of Fall, I am craving soup big time. There's just something about being at home, curled up on the couch with warm socks, wool and blankets while a good hearty and healthful soup bubbles away on the stove.
The past two years I've shared a list of five favorite soups (see here & here) and I figured I might as well carry on the tradition. While we normally love soups chock full of beans, lentils and other such goodies, we've recently been making all our favorite soups without them- I tried eating some and poor Caleb's little tummy was messed up for a few days. So no more of that for me... We've been making our favorite carrot & fennel soup, as well as tomato soup, and I can't wait to make our first pumpkin soup of the year.
But aside from that, we've found some other great alternatives for bean/lentil-less soups, which I'm sharing with you today:
1. roasted butternut squash soup
Okay, seriously yum. I used this recipe that I found through Pinterest and it was delicious. They key is definitely the pre-roasting. The recipe says to blend it up, but we just mashed it with a potato masher, which resulted in a lovely, rustic texture.
2. hearty Irish beef & ale stew
This is a big favorite of ours. It takes a little while to cook, but the flavor is worth the time put in. Also, once you get everything in the pot and simmering, you've basically done all the work. This is the perfect stew to have on low on the stove while you putter around and do other things, or while you curl up with some tea and a good book. I use a recipe from our favorite Jamie Oliver cookbook but this is quite similar.
3. cream of potato chowder
Waldi experimented with this recipe one cool day earlier this summer and it turned out excellent, so I thought I would add it to this list. It's basically just mashed potato with creme fraiche and mushrooms added in but maybe I'll end up sharing the recipe here at some point...
4. vegan sweet potato & roasted red pepper soup
Seriously yum. We used this recipe and it was a huge hit. The yams just add the perfect amount of sweetness and the color of this soup is hard to beat. While we were in Scotland, we had a similar soup with yam & butternut squash at a cafe in the highlands that was so delicious. That's next on my list to try for sure.
5. good old turkey soup
So, we've not made this yet this year, but it's Thanksgiving weekend (if you're Canadian...) and this is just the perfect thing to use up all that leftover turkey. I always add carrots, celery and a bit of pasta to mine. I have memories of making huge pots of this after last thanksgiving and then (thanks to first trimester hormones...) being too nauseous to actually eat it, so you can bet I'll be making it again this year!
photo by my sister, Elizabeth Barr
Ooh, thanks so much for all the lovely soup ideas! (I hadn't seen your posts from previous years before). Soup is always such a staple part of our autumn/winter diet, but I can tend to just end up making a "chuck it all in the crock pot" kind of mash up, so it's SO good to have some new things to try! N°3 & 4 sound espeacially yummy! Also, I'm intrigued....can soup be considered a "proper" meal in Germany? Here in France it is only ever really treated as a starter - so whilst for example my mother in law makes the most incredibly velvety & light soups, I'm always dissapointed that we can't just keep eating that with piles of bread & cheese like we would in my family back home!
ReplyDeleteAs for the lentils/pulses, we are predominantly veggie in our little family and I remember only two well a couple of upset tummy times for little man in the first few months after he was born. It seemed to only happen when we ate certain pulses (I think it was adzuki & red kidney) so we avoided them from my diet until he was 6 months old. Otherwise split peas & red lentils were always fine (as well as hummus made with chickpeas as long as they were really well cooked). My midwife who's also veggie (incredibly rare here in France!) advised us that as long as things were really properly cooked (almost to the extent of mush) there should be no problem (but of course to lay off if there are any poorly tummies). The same went for introducing solids when we began after he was 6 months old - just the real gentle pulses (starting with red lentils) in very small quantaties. We've had no problems since last year! (Sorry, that's turned into a bit of an essay, your post has just got me all enthused!!)