I have always loved the process of cutting up fruit and vegetables. I find it very therapeutic and I love all the pretty colors. I received a delivery from 5G Farms on Tuesday & decided it was perfect time for a good vegetable rich soup. I promise you that my kids ate every kind of veggie that was in this because it all tasted so good! This is my first semi step-by-step recipe post like this, but cooking is very much a loose science for me as long as you follow some basic helpful rules. On the other hand, when you're baking, that is an exact science! Without further ado, we shall get started!
Step 1 in cooking is knowing that FLAVOR is important during the entire process. I started with 1/2 a large onion, 2 tbsp of minced garlic (I use the kind in water, not in oil) and 1/2 stick of butter. Saute
that goodness and everyone in your house will be like "OMG! What are you making?!"- They're called aromatics for a reason.
Next I chopped veggies. Baby red potatoes were just peeled a bit to remove some of the skin. I like the skin, but they needed a little pruning. And yes, those are yellow & purple carrots. Also pictured:
Snap peas that I cut in half later. Rainbow Swiss chard! These are gorgeous and for this recipe, I just cut the stems and chopped them up. I saved the leaves for something else. I love to eat asparagus but I rarely make it right. I bypassed my usual failure by using it in my soup instead. Bonus tip: trim the ends of your asparagus & place them in water like you would flowers until you're ready to cook them. They stay fresh that way!
Look how pretty those carrots are! You should throw these in when you'e sauteing your onions to get them softening from the beginning. Carrots take the longest to cook. Added the Swiss chard to saute as well here. I would say I used approximately 1 to 1.5 cups of each vegetable - this is for my family of 4 and leaves leftovers. And these leftovers taste even better than the first dinner!
Potatoes don't take long. I added them along with the peas & asparagus once I had the broth going.
My go to is about 4-5 cups of liquid. I LOVE to use Bullion cubes (1 per each cup of water & a bonus one for flavor) or even go straight for broth if I have it. I prefer to use bone broth which has the most goodness in it when I buy broth from the store. I was out of both of those things, so I used water and LOTS of seasoning. I measure seasoning with my heart.
I forgot to mention, I added salt & pepper during the saute stage as well, so I had salted butter plus the seasonings to build the flavor through out the process. Honestly, you can use whatever you want, just be sure to taste test the broth before you let everything simmer so you know if you need more flavor at that stage. Also, I like to throw turmeric into every soup I make because of it's anti-inflammatory properties.
Now, we have quite a few cans of chicken (thanks to Costco & Sams memberships) so I decided to throw a couple of cans in towards the end. This is great if you don't have fresh chicken or you need to use up some of the pantry goods. You can leave it out entirely if you don't eat meat.
Total cook time is approximately 40 minutes. I sauteed the onions, garlic, carrots & Swiss chard for about 10 minutes. I added the liquid & seasonings to start the broth and added the rest of my veggies at that point. I let it cook on medium low heat for about 30 minutes and I added the chicken about 5 minutes before the end of cooking time.
Here is the final product in my bowl! It was so good that the kids ate everything I asked them to eat & even commented that the veggies didn't taste like veggies and my older son asked if we could have the vegetables cooked like this every time. I call that a success.
