Welcome to the Soup Chronicles!

I am so excited to share with you a month's worth of delicious, nutrient dense, soup recipes.

The recipes are diverse, plant-based and versatile. One of the things I love most about soup is how easily adaptable recipes are to what you have on hand. There will always be the staples, the holy trinity of cooking - CARROTS, ONIONS, CELERY. I highly recommend ALWAYS having these on hand. They’re excellent flavour bases for soups, pastas, sauces, roasts, and everything in between. There will be very few recipes that don’t consist of these 3 ingredients. Aside from being great flavour builders they help to effortlessly add nutrients to your dishes.

GARLIC is another big player in all my recipes. I LOOOOVE garlic, without exaggeration it truly is one of my favorite smells and flavours. Garlic has many immune boosting, health properties. It is typically added to recipes in smaller amounts and adds an underlying flavour - if you’re not a garlic fan please don’t omit the garlic front he recipes but instead scale back. If garlic gives you digestive issues, I want you to pay special attention to how you prepare the garlic for your recipes.

I wanted to start off the Soup Chronicles with my favorite cooking staples: STOCK also known as a major flavour builder. Stocks (vegetable, beef, chicken or fish) are amazing ways to add flavour to your dishes and utilize a lot of scraps. You work hard for your money, so let’s try not throw it in the compost bin. I get my vegetables delivered from Mama Earth organics (local, organic, seasonal produce delivered right to my door) when my order arrives I like to wash, prep and store my vegetables. Storing vegetables properly can be a major factor in the longevity of your produce as well as nutrient content. Trimmings, peels, stalks, leaves, tops, are all the things you’re probably used to throwing away has flavour and nutrients inside. A great habit to get into is saving and freezing your scraps for stocks. (the same can be said for animal protein and bones but well get into that when we talk about the stocks). Freezing with help to preserve the vegetables until you’re ready to use them.

I’ve put together a pretty basic vegetable stock recipe for you to follow but keep in mind you can sub out what you don’t have and add in what you do. If you practice keeping a scrap container in your freezer, vegetable stock becomes very economical as you need less whole vegetables to make the stock and can utilize your scraps to the fullest. If I’m making a veggie scrap stock I will always bulk up the flavour with an onion, garlic and a carrot. I like to sauté as a way to build more flavour but you could quite literally dump the scraps, a chopped onion, a smashed clove of garlic and a whole carrot into a pot with 12 cups of water - boil and simmer for 1 hour.

Now how easy is that?.

SUPER DUPER VEGGIE STOCK

INGREDIENTS

2 Onions quartered

2 large Carrots, scrubbed & chopped

2 Portobello Mushrooms, chopped

2 stalks Celery, chopped

2 Parsnips, scrubbed & chopped

2 heads Garlic, sliced in half

1 head Broccoli, chopped

1 Red Pepper, chopped

1 tbsp Olive Oil

2 cups Kale leaves & stalks (optional)

1 bunch Parsley

1 tbsp Black Peppercorn

5 Bay leaves

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 400F

Lay vegetables out on a baking sheet (if two crowded use two baking sheets and roast at 400F on convection)

Drizzle with olive oil and generously season with salt

Roast until the edges of vegetables just begin to brown, about 20 minutes.

Transfer vegetables to a stock pot and cover with 10 cups of water.

Add the peppercorns, bay leaves, parsley and kale.

Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer.

Simmer covered for 30 minutes.

Uncover and continue to simmer for an additional 30 minutes - you want the stock to condense a little bit to intensify the flavour.

Strain through a fine strainer, store in mason jars, freeze in ice cube trays or ziploc bags.