Recipe first. If you want to find out why this is superior the canned stuff, scroll down past the recipe for the story.
Tomato-based vegetable soup with wholesome ingredients
Ingredients:
· 2 quarts chicken stock, or beef stock, or water (see the post here on how to make your own stock at home)
· About 8 to 10 cups of diced, raw vegetables such as string beans, peeled carrots, celery, zucchini, summer squash. Keep the prepared vegetables in separate piles, because you are going to cook them at different times. See the note at the end for types of vegetables to use, and why the timing is different.
· 1 jar of tomato sauce such as marinara sauce (around 28- or 32-ounce size). Choose a brand that does not contain sugar, and that uses only pure olive oil, not vegetable oil.
Sofrito:
· 1 small onion or regular-sized shallot
· 4 cloves of garlic, minced
· 4 tablespoons olive oil
Optional extra herbs and spices:
· Basil
· Oregano
· Salt and pepper
· Parsley
Assemble the soup. If you are using string beans, trim them and snip into 1-inch pieces. Cook them in the stock or water for about 40 minutes. Then add diced carrots and celery. Cook for another 20 minutes or so. Add the zucchini and summer squash, cook for about 20 minutes. Add the tomato sauce, and simmer the soup while you prepare the sofrito.
To make the sofrito, fry the onion in the olive oil for about 5 minutes on moderate heat, until the onion starts to soften. Add the garlic and cook another minute or so. Scrape the sofrito mixture into the soup. Stir, and taste to see whether you need to add salt and/or pepper, or any of the optional herbs.
At this point, the soup is ready. You can add additional chopped herbs (such as basil or parsley), along with pre-cooked rice or beans. Cooked pasta in small shapes will also work.
This soup tastes better the next day, after the flavors have had a chance to blend. Store in the refrigerator.
Notes:
The vegetables I listed above are the ones I prefer. They are cooked a long time because I like them soft rather than crunchy. I start cooking the green beans first, because they take the longest to soften. If you like crunchy vegetables, shorten the cooking time.
You can add pre-cooked cauliflower or broccoli at the same time you add the sofrito. I don’t recommend cooking these cruciferous vegetables longer than necessary, because they can develop a bad smell.
Frozen vegetables, such as corn and peas will also work. Add them toward the end of the cooking time. Diced potatoes are a hearty addition, they’ll need to be added at the beginning, with the string beans.
Use a tomato sauce that contains no sugar and no oil other than olive oil. Michael’s and Rao’s are good brands.
You can flavor the soup with whatever herbs you prefer. In addition to the ones I listed above, you can use thyme, rosemary, scallions, and/or chervil.
This soup will keep about a week in the refrigerator. You can freeze it.
Story:
Many of us grew up on the canned version of this soup. My favorite, as a child, was the tomato-based alphabet soup. It was vegetable soup with small pasta in the shape of the letters. Some of us cannot tolerate carbs anyore, so we have to choose low-carb options. Canned soup without pasta (depending on the brand) are not necessarily low-carb; they contain ingredients such as potato starch, sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, and "flavorings"--whatever that means. Don't take my word for it, look up the nutrition information online. If you want a soup that's got real ingredients, and exactly the vegetables that you love, try this version. It is delicious, and far better than any commercial product, especially if you make your own bone-broth-stock, which I encourage you to do. Even if you use water instead of stock, you will end up with a tasty soup that is far more healthful and cheaper than the canned stuff from the supermarket. I make a pot of this soup and serve it as the vegetable option at every meal. It saves me time in having to prepare vegetables every day.
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