Would you care to share your favorite soup recipe?

Not exactly soup but I make some mean stewed greens.

About four bags of turnip and collards. (Not canned or frozen either bagged or fresh)
Four large chopped carrots
can of black eyed peas
one ham hock
can of chicken stock.
Boil the greens in a large stock pot until they are all wilted.
Drain and transfer into a crock pot. Add ham hock, carrots, peas and chicken stock. Add water as needed. Slow cook for 6–8 hours. Drain and enjoy!

Here’s one of mine, a self created recipe that is really good.
( amounts can be adjusted as you wish )

2–3 quarts either chicken or vegetable stock
One smoked turkey sausage or smokey links, diced
2 ups diced baby potatoes
2 cups julienned red, yellow and orange bell peppers
2 cups chopped green cabbage
2 cups diced yellow crookneck squash
1–2 TBS of Italian seasonings
½ tsp. cracked red pepper ( more or less depending on your zip factor. haha )
2 minced garlic cloves or tsp. of dried, minced garlic
sea salt to taste.

Combine all ingredients in large soup pot or crock pot.
Cook on “high” in crock pot for 3–4 hours or bring to boil and continue simmering at low boil until potatoes are tender.
Serve with garlic cheese bread, cornbread or hot buttered tortillas.

I keep chicken stock on hand, and I make a super easy chicken soup from that.

Chicken stock from the store is good, but I make it from scratch because I get a roast chicken dinner AND chicken stock for the price of store-bought stock.

Chicken stock
—Roast a chicken
—Eat the chicken
—Tear up the carcass, put in a large pot
—Fill with water an inch or two over the top of the bird
—Add 1 big or 2 small onions, cut into half
—Add 2 or 3 stalks of celery, cut or broken into pieces

Simmer (don’t boil) for a couple of hours
Strain
Refrigerate or freeze stock in ziploc bags
Pick chicken meat out of strainer, refrigerate or freeze

Quick Chicken Soup
—Chicken stock
—Vegetables – frozen, fresh I don’t care – Peas/green beans/carrots/potato/whatever is on hand
—Cooked red beans or white beans (optional)
—Chicken meat from the stock making (optional)

Heat the stock and vegetables – minimal if you like raw veggies, otherwise boil a bit

This isn’t really chili, it’s soup. But it’s really good soup.

Mayo Clinic White Chicken Chili

1 can (10 ounces) white chunk chicken
3 cups cooked white beans
1 can (14.5 ounces) low-sodium diced tomatoes
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 medium onion, chopped
½ medium green pepper, chopped
1 medium red pepper, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
Cayenne pepper, to taste
6 tablespoons shredded reduced-fat Monterey Jack cheese
3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
6 ounces low-fat baked tortilla chips (about 65 chips)

In a large soup pot, add the chicken, beans, tomatoes and chicken broth. Cover and simmer over medium heat.

Meanwhile, spray a nonstick frying pan with cooking spray. Add the onions, peppers and garlic and saute until the vegetables are soft, 3 to 5 minutes.

Add the onion and pepper mixture to the soup pot. Stir in the chili powder, cumin, oregano and, as desired, cayenne pepper. Simmer for about 10 minutes, or until all the vegetables are soft.

Ladle into warmed bowls. Sprinkle each serving with 1 tablespoon cheese and 1 teaspoon cilantro. Serve with baked chips on the side (about 6 to 8 chips with each serving of chili).

I make a really good Matzo Ball soup. The easy way is to just use chcken stock and broth 50/50 follow the directions on the box and then there is the not so hard way but takes a bit more effort and so worth it. Take a half of a store bought rotisserie Chicken and toss it in a strainer basket and I use just chicken broth only and simmer for 3 hours. Skim off the fat and strain out any debris if you want a clearer broth. Set the broth on simmer and cut the largest carrots you can find into ¾” to 1” thick chunks and do the same with the biggest stalks of celery you can find about 4 carrots and celery stalks each. Toss into broth and simmer at least an hour. Mix up the Matzo mix per instructions (2 packages) except I add in lemon pepper for added zing but not a lot just a hint and refrigerate. Meanwhile take apart the chicken, remove skin and pull off good chunks of the meat and add to the soup. With 30 minutes left I will boil a pot of water and roll up the matzo balls sometimes really big sometimes more meatball sized just depends on my mood.

All my other soups strictly depend on what’s in the fridge. I love riffing when I make soup. My only secret weapon is barley. Barley in any soup makes it extra special! Yum!

Onion soup.

I prefer yellow onions.

Slice up however many onions you want and saute them in real butter.
Put them in the crock pot along with however many cans of beef broth you want to use.
Dice up a good bread, like French bread, and submerge in the beef broth. The more bread you use the thicker the soup will be.
Cook on high / low for 97 years (Ok. For hours and hours and hours.)
Serve with Swiss cheese. I just grate mine and put it in the bottom of the bowl and let the hot soup melt it. You can also put the soup in individual baking dishes and put the cheese on top and broil it till it’s browned. That would be good too, I think.

It gets nothing but better over time.

I make a knockoff of Olive Garden’s Zuppa Toscana – because hubby loves that soup and nearly everything else there is greasy and inedible.

It’s been a while, let me see if I can remember how it’s done.

This recipe will be in Seek-lingo. I cook by intuition and smell. Deal with it.

Get a pound or two of bulk mild (or spicy, you do you) italian sausage. If you can’t find bulk get the regular crap and take it out of the casing. Crumble and brown it. Drain it, and set it aside.

Separately, crisp (like super-crisp) up three or four (or five… whatever) strips of bacon, and drain and crumble that.
Dice up some onion and throw that in with the bacon to soften it up and get it nice and transparent.

Fill your stock pot with water and chuck in 10 bullion cubes. Alternately, fill it with like half water and half chicken stock. And then throw some bullion in anyway because FLAVOR.

Boil, then throw in the bacon and the onion and some red pepper flakes – as much as you like – I do just a few shakes ‘cause I’m a weenie. Cube up some potatoes and get those in the broth. When they’re softened, add the sausage.

Reduce your heat to low and sllloooowwwwllyyyy stir in about a cup and a half to a pint of heavy cream. Get it back up to a good warmth.

Grab a handful of escarole (Olive Garden uses kale. Fuck kale. Escarole is better.) and rip it up into spoonable pieces, and throw some into every bowl. Dole out the soup on top of the escarole.

Serve with awesome crusty bread you made this morning. Never go to fake Italian restaurants again.

I am enjoying reading all the soup recipes from the Jellies!

Here’s what I do for chicken soup. This is the only soup I ever make, other than once making New England clam chowder with my mom in Cape Cod (very simple and easy to make, by the way).

Chicken Soup
In a pot, put cut cup carrots, celery, onion and chicken pieces (I use thighs because they’re meaty and fatty but relatively cheap. My mom used wings which have more fat, it seems, but they’re more expensive and less meaty).

Sometimes I cheat and use carrots that are pre-sliced or match stick style and sometimes I cheat by using frozen onions, which saves on tears from onion chopping.

Boil the crap out of that for at least an hour. At some point, when the meat looks cooked, I take the thighs out one by one and remove the bones and cut up the meat, and then throw all back into the pot, including the bones. The bones give the soup some body from the boiling cartilage.

I’ll lower the heat at some point.

Toward the end, I will put in either some type of pasta, like elbow macaroni, or rice. It has to boil at least another 20 minutes with the addition.

Salt to taste, or not and salt it when you’re eating it, or both.

Really easy, really good.

“Boil the crap out of that for at least an hour” @jca That is my kind of cooking tip! XD

Buy can of chicken and rice soup. Open heat enjoy.

If anyone has a good cream of Celery recipe do share.

@Coloma, I would prolly hang my apron on this one I love cooking with root veggies.

@Cruiser Oooh..I’m gonna try that! Big lurve to you!

@Coloma When you master this recipe…send me an invite by homing goose and I will be there.

@RedDeerGuy1: Not to burst your bubble, but canned soup is nothing but fat and salt. Very bad for you. It’s ok once in a while, but to eat it all the time is not good for you at all.

Two of my favorites:
http://www.unclejerryskitchen.com/recipes/thick-and-creamy-potato-bacon-soup/

http://tastykitchen.com/recipes/soups/beef-stew-with-beer-and-paprika/

@jca salt, yeah, but not fat so much. It’s as healthy as anything else.

@Dutchess_III: If you check nutrition for the average canned soup you’ll see the fat content is higher on canned soup than on homemade (by checking nutrition sites).

It’s easy to find low-fat and low-sodium canned soup.

@Call_Me_Jay: I’m guessing @RedDeerGuy1 is not eating low fat, low sodium soup.

@jca I haven’t had canned soup in 6 years.

Sorry @RedDeerGuy1. Up above you wrote “Buy can of chicken and rice soup. Open heat enjoy.” I can only go by what you wrote.

@jca OK . : )

But fat is what makes the soups, almost any food, taste so good!

I make chicken soup similar to @jca, but if I am going to want chicken cut up in the soup I add a chicken breast (bone in) along with the thighs or legs. I prefer breast pieces in soup, but the dark meat has the flavor and the fat. I often add a Knorr boullion to add sodium and a little extra flavor if I don’t have the pot packed full of chicken. My MIL uses chicken feet for tons of flavor. I assume they are cheap, but I don’t know.

I use the thighs and legs for paella usually when I make chicken soup this way. I use part of the broth for the rice for the paella, and the rest of the broth for soup. I usually make matzah ball soup with the broth, and to that broth I add dill. Sometimes I make a Mexican chicken soup by adding diced tomatoes and jalapeños to the broth and the diced chicken breast.

I make a quick tomato based soup that’s kind of an Italian pasta soup. I boil water and a little bit of pasta, usually small shells, and then once they are close to done, but not yet, I add sphaghetti sauce, browned ground beef and frozen corn. If you like it spicy you can add a little hot pepper flakes. Continue simmering a few minutes and done. I make a single serving at a time. The water and pasta sauce are in about equal amounts. You can add more or less water to get the right consistency.

I used to have a quick and easy potato soup recipe, but I don’t know where it went to. It was onions and evaporate milk and diced potato. You could add bacon pieces to it if you like that sort of thing. I could make it lowish fat, which I liked for what is basically a cream soup.

So no one likes my beef stew or potato soup recipe?

Why should I bother sharing if I’m not going to be acknowledged?

@blackbetty: I wrote that I am so much enjoying reading all the soup recipes from the Jellies. That means before my post and after my post. I didn’t think I had to acknowledge each one individually. They all look great!

I DIDN’T GET ENOUGH GA’S EITHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! >_< AND NOBODY COMMENTED ON MY SOUP. I’m goin’ home!!