When the weather turns colder, there is nothing more comforting than soup. You can buy ready-made soup in various formats, but once you make your own, you will never again enjoy tinned, canned, bottled, or packaged soup, with quite the same relish. Homemade soup is cheap and easy to make, delicious and good for you and your family.

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Many people believe that making your own soup is difficult or that you need many ingredients. Soup is one of the easiest dishes to make and even a few simple ingredients can make the tastiest soups. Use whatever you have to hand. If you have forgotten vegetables in the bottom of the refrigerator, and they are a little past their best, use them in soup. Do not throw away cauliflower stalks or the green leaves from their outsides use them for soup, cabbage stalks too can go into soup.

Many people throw away chicken carcasses or bones left from the Sunday Joint, boil them up in a pan, for about an hour and a half or so, with some water, herbs and an onion chopped into rough chunks, and you have a stock for soup. Strain the stock and throw bones and vegetables away they have given their best and their flavour is in your stock. If you do not want to use the stock straight away, put it in the freezer for your next soup or gravy. Some people freeze stock in ice cube trays for use in gravies or for moistening homemade baby food, but never salt stock if you are going to use it for babies or very young children.

A good soup recipe uses squash, butternut squash is good but you can use any type of squash.

Peel and deseed squash dice into small cubes, the smaller cubes cook better, peel and dice a large potato or several small ones into small pieces, peel and chop an onion or two depending on taste. Use butter and a splash of olive oil and sauté potato and squash for five minutes or so add chopped onion and fry until soft. A large wok is good to sauté vegetables for soup as it is easier to stir the ingredients but you can use a large saucepan. Add some dried spices to taste, a little ginger will give your soup a fillip, curry powder or paste works well, chili powder and paprika will give a spicy taste, but create the flavours that your family enjoys. Then sauté for a minute, or so, to give the spices time to roast a little, and release their flavours, then add enough stock, or water and a (vegetable or chicken) bouillon, or stock, cube to cover the vegetables. Cook until the vegetables are soft. Tasting and adjusting the flavour as necessary. When the vegetables are soft, liquidize, blend, process, or sieve so that you have a thick consistency, if you feel you soup is too thick add water or milk to thin it a little. Return the mixture to the pan and heat. Check seasoning. Serve in bowls or soup cups or mugs, accompanied by croutons or a hunk of Bread.

A nice recipe is Cauliflower Cheese soup.

Begin with diced potato and chopped onion and olive oil sauté gently until the potato changes colour, stirring constantly. Add cauliflower cut into florets, or use chopped up cauliflower stalk, outside leaves, and a few cauliflower florets, add any blue cheese crumbled, then add a pint and three quarters of stock. Cover and simmer until vegetables are soft. Blend, Liquidize, or process, return to pan and stir in a quarter pint of heavy cream, light cream, plain crème fresh or milk. Add seasoning to taste. Serve soup with a sprinkling of Paprika accompanied by croutons, a hunk of crusty bread or your own preferred accompaniments.

You can make all sorts of vegetable soups this way. To make a more hearty soup add some pasta, dumplings, meatballs, rice, pearl barley, beans or whatever you fancy. The beauty of soup cookery is that it is so adaptable. Change your soup ingredients to match what you have in the refrigerator or what vegetables are in season and, therefore, cheap.

You can add leftover cooked vegetables to soup. Leftover potato will thicken a soup and not leave an aftertaste, unlike many other thickeners.

You can make soup as a starter, or make a hearty main course soup depending on what you add to your soup. Soup is versatile, cheap and easy to make, very nutritious, comforting, and delicious. Soup is a wonder dish that will delight your family. 

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