Ultimate easy tomato soup

Looking for a quick and easy tomato soup recipe to warm you up on a cold day? Check this out!

Our warm spring days were short lived and it’s been rather blustery and cool here in London in recent days. The weather has regressed my appetite back to the start of Winter when I was craving hot, soothing food to warm my cockles after a chilly day of walking, cycling or simply slogging it out in the office. In my mind, the simplest and tastiest way to do this is with soup.

Soup is fantastic. It’s portable – pop it in a heated thermos to provide a warming lunch on a long walk – and a great way to smuggle tons of vegetables into your diet. The straw poll soup of choice is tomato and I’ve got a nifty trick to increase the goodness as well as the flavour in this common classic. You might think that my twist would involve slow roasted vine tomatoes or the best quality olive oil (which would be lovely but also time consuming or expensive) but it’s a little more unusual than that and it’s in season right now. Beetroot. Yes, you read correctly! This fantastic root is lends its depth of flavour and colour to make a deliciously rich tomato soup. You don’t even need to be the biggest beetroot fan as the taste and tone isn’t out and out beetroot; the addition simply gives it a certain je ne c’est quoi to the finished soup.

Beetroot is bursting with lots of vitamins (including vitamins A, B6 and C) and minerals like potassium, magnesium and iron. Beets are a great source carbohydrates, protein, powerful antioxidants, folic acid and soluble fibre. It’s available in bunches in the supermarket or your local farmers market but it can also be found all year round pre-cooked in shrink-wrapped packets. Either works well though the raw form will increase the cooking time as you’ll need to scrub it, remove the leaves and stork and then microwave with a splash of water until it is soft. Cooking times vary depending on the size of the root but I find it tends to take about 20 minutes on full power. Find out more about the health benefits of beetroot and a myriad recipes too.

This soup recipe is quick, healthy and cheap. It takes less than 20 minutes to prepare and cook. Even better, a portion comes in at about 25p so it’s an absolute bargain! Cheaper and tastier than Heinz cream of tomato any day. You can freeze it in batches and it will also keep well in the fridge for a few days if you whip up a big batch.

Ultimate easy tomato soup
Makes 4 – 6 servings (depending on how greedy you are!)

Ingredients:
1 onion
1 carrot
1 stick of celery
1 400g can of chopped tomatoes
1 300g pack of cooked beetroot or 250g of fresh beetroot topped and tailed and microwaved until soft
100ml water (or stock, if you prefer)

- Chop the onion, carrot and celery and sweat with a little oil (or a splash of water) for five minutes or until softened.
- Meanwhile, chop the beetroot then add to the pan with the tomatoes and water.
- Simmer for five minutes or until piping hot all the way through.
- Blend until smooth then season and serve topped with cheese or low fat yoghurt.

Leek and Potato soup

I think I’ve started something. I like to make a batch of soup at the start of the week (or ideally, the end of the weekend) to feed me throughout the working week slog. With the delayed cold snap creeping in, my office kitchen has a rush hour between 1pm and 2pm where we all crowd around the microwave to heat up our lunchtime fare. Most people have been bringing in soup since Christmas but it’s mainly in the form of cartons or tubs of the readymade supermarket stuff. It seemed like a big thing when my colleagues would ask “Is that homemade!?” Naturally I instilled the virtues of making your own and I think I inspired someone. One of my colleagues came in on Monday looking fresh faced and glowing with a tub of her very own homemade soup. She was really pleased with the results and has followed the trend by making more this weekend. Fab!

I love homemade soup because it’s a great way to use up leftovers and can be adapted to whatever is in season. British leeks are in season at the moment and, combined with potatoes, they make a warming meal that will keep you full for ages. I think that soup has something of a bad name because many people think that it needs hours of boiling on a stove in order for it to ‘proper’ soup. This just isn’t the case! You can make soup incredibly quickly and for much less than the supermarkets. You can pack it with cheap ingredients that are seasonal and good for you plus you know exactly what went into it.

I have leek and potato in my lunchbox this week. Despite its luxuriously creamy taste and texture, there’s no added fat in the recipe so it’s healthy too! I like to add a swirl of wholegrain mustard to add a little je ne c’est quoi.

Leek & Potato soup
Makes 6 – 8 servings

1 onion, sliced
2 sticks of celery, sliced
½ parsnip, cubed
2 leeks, washed and sliced
3 medium potatoes, peeled and sliced
1l or so water or stock
3 tbsp fat free yoghurt
2 tbsp wholegrain mustard

- Sweat the onion, celery, parsnip and leeks over a low heat for three minutes or until soft and sweet. Add a splash of water (instead of butter or oil) to stop it catching and burning.
- Add the potatoes into the pan then top up with water or stock to cover the vegetables. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes or until the potatoes are soft.
- Remove half of the mixture and blitz in a blender – or use a hand blender in the pan so that the soup is mostly smooth but with a few chunks of potato and leek to chomp on.
- Adjust the consistency by adding more water or stock if you like a thinner soup then add the yoghurt and mustard before serving. Sprinkle with your choice of cheese or slurp with a side of cheese on toast.

Autumnal Tomato & Marrow Soup

It definitely feels like autumn. The days are starting to draw in and I'm getting forgetful... If you're part of the Facebook revolution, you'll already know that we went away to enjoy some time on our friend's narrowboat this weekend. I'd prepared a warming casserole for our first meal on the boat and promised to share more details with you on my return. Now, I can be rather forgetful at times so I wrote a list for myself. Toothbrush? Check. A little light reading? Check. Camera? Check. All set. Or maybe not because, when I packed away my faithful camera, I didn't check that it had a memory card in it. School girl error! So I had a camera but no way of recording what turned out to be a lovely meal (though I do say so myself). I gave myself a stern talking to, I can tell you. That aside, we had a fantastic weekend with lots of picnic lunching on the roof.

For now, please warm your cockles with another marrow recipe. Come rain or shine - blustery chilling showers or crisp icy sunshine - this soup is rich, flavoursome and easily prepared in far less than thirty minutes. I made it first thing in the morning so that the only thing that stood in our way of a tasty hot dinner was a little heating up. I even took a serving to work for my lunch, which went down a treat.

This recipe was great for using up some of the marrow that I've recently been given by a colleague however there's still half left in the fridge so there's sure to be another marrow recipe popping up on here in the next few days!

Autumnal Tomato & Marrow Soup
Serves 4

½ onion, sliced
½ large marrow, cubed (my whole marrow was about 40cm by 15cm - a whopper!)
1 green pepper, sliced
1 tin of plum tomatoes, chopped
1 tsp of vegetable stock powder
1 sprig of thyme or 1 tsp dried thyme leaves
1 sprig of oregano or 1 tsp of dried oregano
1 clove garlic, sliced

- Sweat the onion in a large saucepan for a few minutes until soft and slightly translucent.
- Throw in the marrow and cook over a medium heat. It will soften, break down and become a little watery in the pan.
- Add the tomatoes, pepper, stock and herbs to the pan. If the juice from the tomatoes doesn’t cover the marrow, top up with boiling water. Bring to a simmer and add the garlic.
- Simmer for 10 minutes or until all of the vegetables are soft.
- Serve with grated cheddar or crumbled goats cheese and a hunk of crusty bread.

Chinese-Style Noodle Soup

After a long day at work followed by a strenuous dance lesson, I had to practically crawled up the stairs to our first floor flat and into our little kitchen. When it’s just me to feed, I sometimes loose motivation for food at the end of the day and dinner can be just a bowl of cereal or fried egg on toast. Determined not to be lazy and to find something that would be nutritious and filling for my post-workout body, I rummaged through our fridge and threw together this quick Chinese-style soup.

I was feeling patient enough to chop and slice everything, which is the most time consuming part of the whole meal. Then again, the neat-and-tidy part of me finds slicing vegetables into incredibly thin, itsy witsy pieces rather therapeutic. It's quite nice to do something quiet and controlled after heaving myself around a pole for an hour. Once you're done with the chopping board, you're only ten minutes away from a tasty low-fat meal. I figure it's low fat - there's no oil involved and nothing else except water and vegetables...

This is a great way to use up the crunched up, broken noodles at the bottom of the packet. All of the vegetables - spring greens, carrots, courgette and spring onions - came from the UK so, despite its far Eastern influences and flavour, it's a seasonal dish. Naturally, you can swap the veggies around however you wish depending your own tastes and the seasons. It would be lovely with some poached chicken or prawns but I just had it straight up - it's quicker that way!

Chinese-Style Noodle Soup
Serves two

1 tsp finely grated ginger
1 clove garlic, finely sliced
1 star anise
1 tsp (or ½ cube) vegetable or chicken stock powder
2 large leaves of Spring Green cabbage, finely sliced
50g dried egg noodles
Handful of finely sliced or julienne cut carrot and courgette
Handful of fresh coriander
1 tbsp soy sauce (or to taste)
1 tsp chilli, finely sliced (or to taste)
2 tbsp spring onion, finely sliced

- Put the stock powder, garlic, star anise and grated ginger in a jug and top up with boiling water to 600ml. Stir until the powder has dissolved.
- Pour into a wok or large saucepan and bring to a gentle simmer. Add the spring greens and cook for 3 minutes.
- Separate the coriander leaves from the stems. Chop the stems if you like but I like to leave them whole.
- Add the egg noodles to the soup and stir, ensuring that they are completely submerged in the stock. Cook for 2 minutes then add the coriander stems, carrots and courgettes.
- Cook for a further 2 minutes or until the noodles are tender.
- Add the soy and stir well. Remove the star anise. Taste and adjust the flavours accordingly.
- Garnish with coriander leaves and a scattering of spring onion and chilli before serving. Eat with chop sticks and slurp the soupy liquid straight from the bowl!

Spring-time Minestrone

We love our fresh veggies. Our fridge is testament to this and was looking rather full when I opened it yesterday evening. Much as I love them, vegetables have a tendency to go off all at once so I needed a plan for using some of them up.

Having changed jobs just over six months ago, I’m now working in a small town in Somerset. Although I don’t miss the lengthy commute, I do sometimes miss the sights and sounds of the city. Namely, being able to buy my lunch, if I so choose, from a variety of yummy places right on my doorstep. Now, I take my lunch every day and try to ring the changes to keep it interesting. Soup is a popular choice because it’s pretty easy to bung everything in a pot of an evening and simmer it into something tasty.

Now that the sunny Spring weather seems to have subsided into April showers, I looked in the fridge and I saw soup. Now, this might not be a very authentic recipe; advance apologies to all the Nonna’s out there!

I like to use up as much of my veggies as possible and like to cook up the broccoli stem which some people tend to discard without thinking. True enough, it can be a little tougher that the florets but it’s still very tasty. Try it finely diced in soups as a flavoursome filler to make it go further. I’ve had this for my lunch today and it’s a good one bowl meal; the spaghetti means that I don’t feel the need to have bread with it. It's a pretty cheap, quick and easy recipe. The whole thing takes just over half an hour to make, minus the chopping.

Spring-time Minestrone soup
Serves 4

1 onion, diced
1 small swede (or half a large one), diced
1 carrot, diced
2 stick of celery, diced
Stem of 1 head of broccoli, diced
1 red pepper, diced
Half a savoy cabbage, finely shredded
50g spaghetti
800ml vegetable (or chicken) stock
2 tbsp tomato pureé
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped/crushed
1 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 bay leaf
Sunflower or olive oil

- Gently sweat the onion, swede, celery and carrot in a little sunflower oil over a low heat for 15 minutes or so until tender and sweet.
- Add the broccoli stem and garlic and sweat for a further 5 minutes.
- Add the pepper. Add the tomato pureé to the stock and stir until combined then add to the pan.
- Add the herbs. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 – 15 minutes.
- Break the spaghetti and cut the cabbage so that it is in bite-sized lengths and add to the pan.
- Cook for a further 5 minutes until the spaghetti and cabbage are tender.
- Serve with shavings of parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil.

Tip: to make this gluten-free, simply substitute the spaghetti for rice. You can also add cannellini or borlotti beans if you want to make it even more filling. This recipe is vegetarian (if you go for a vegetarian hard cheese when serving) but bacon or pancetta can be added at the start for a meaty flavour.