Recipe: Homemade Soup
Monday, March 30th, 2009In winter, thinking about homemade soup brings me to days of rain, wind and cold. Whilst preparing and making this soup, I cant help be thankful for everything I have. A warm bed at night, warm clothes, and a roof over my head to name a few. It’s heartbreaking to know there are so many out there without these essentials. If you can, donate a blanket or other warm items whenever you can to homeless shelters. Keep an eye out for collection boxes and try help where you can.
Homemade Soup!
This leads me to my homemade soup recipe. I’ve been eating too much bread lately at work so I’ve been making and bringing soup for lunch instead. Much healthier, warmer, and tastier. And if you prefer a little carbs in your diet, then a slice of toast would go down well with this meal too.
When making this soup, you can omit the meat if you prefer a plain veg soup, so just tweak it the way you’d prefer it. You could also blend it all to make a thicker, puree if you dont like chunky pieces (I’m a fan of chunks in the soup). Kids might prefer the puree version too. Also feel free to add pretty much any veg you’d like. The only thing to note, is potato doesnt freeze well so if you’re going to freeze it, remove the potato chunks first.
4-7 medium carrots
2 medium turnips
2 large tomatoes, peeled.
1-2 stalks of celery (soup celery is prefered, as precut table celery is too stringy)
2 medium potatoes
1 small onion
small handful of parsley
400g beef shin, boned or deboned. *optional
1 cup of samp, presoaked.
Olive oil
1 packet of brown onion soup powder (I’ve started using Ina Paarmen’s brown onion soup/gravy/stock powder but the soup is more rich-looking with the brown onion soup mix)
1 stock cube (beef, chicken or veg)
First, put your tomatoes into a bowl and fill with boiling water. Leave for a few minutes, then replace hot water with cold water. When tomatoes are cool, take a sharp knife and gently slice the skin down one side. The skin should peel away with ease. Dice this up and put in a large bowl.
Dice up your onion and cube your meat. Put this in a pot with a tiny dash of olive oil. Not too much oil, as the meat will provide extra when browning.
Peel your carrots, turnips & potatoes.
Chop & grate your veg and put it in a bowl
Chop up half your carrots into thin slices. I prefer using the end part of the carrot so your pieces arent too huge floating in the pot. Chop up your celery and potatoes and put all chopped food into the bowl with the diced tomatoes (if you’re going to take a while with the grating, put the potato chunks into a bowl of water so they dont go brown whilst waiting). Grate the left over ingredients and add to the bowl of chopped veg.
Prepare the brown onion soup mix/Ina Paarmen’s stock powder.
Brown the meat & onions, prepare the stock, add the veg and top up with water
Brown your onions and meat on high. Add the rest of the vegetables and samp. Pour in the stock, top up with boiling water and crumble in your stock cube. Turn to a low heat, cover, and leave to simmer for one to one and a half hours, stirring occasionally. Serve hot.
Store in glass when in fridge, as soup will sour when kept in plastic. Freeze in plastic, but remove potatoes.
I was going to say how much fun it was making my first ever gingerbread men and tell you about my bf’s work function on Sat night. *sigh* Now I’m not in the mood 
Lets hope they like them! 
So during my phase of baking, I decided for Christmas I wanted to make Gingerbread Cookies (as I’ve probably mentioned before). So I set out to find the cliche gingerbread man shape. Not the one with a fat body and tiny head, not the one with spindley arms, not the one with hands and feet…just your typical American 3″x3″ gingerbread shape.
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