Like most Scots, I was brought up eating what is known in my house as 'homemade soup'.
I bet you probably didn't know until you left home either that there were other ways to make soup that didn't involve just turnip, carrot, celery, lentils, broth mix and a ham stock cube.
Don't get me wrong, my mum's soups were the best soups ever - no one could make soup like her, not even my nana.
I use the basis of that to make all my soups nowadays… no matter how fancy your ingredients are, if you haven't made that base stock as tasty as you can, you are only going to have an okay soup, not the best homemade soup.
The other thing I didn't realise until leaving home and making soups every day was you don't have to rely on ham or chicken stock cubes, plus there's so much out there to choose from when making veggie soups. Thank goodness, otherwise I would be stuck for ideas making two soups a day most days.
The soup I've chosen is really easy to make. Full of vitamin A, C and K and it's packed with iron.
It's a good choice if you fancy starting a spring detox, plus all the ingredients are organic so there's no excuse for you not feeling amazing after eating it. Even the bread's organic.
Ingredients
8 tbsp olive oil
1 large bay leaf
1 large white onion diced
5 garlic cloves diced
3 red chillies sliced
2 bags of kale, de-stemmed and chopped
2 bags of spinach
1 bag of celery sliced
4 carrots grated
1 lemon-zest and juice
650 ml organic vegan bouillon (2 tbsp of powder)
Salt and pepper
1 large handful of parsley chopped
Method
1 Heat the oil on a medium heat and add the onion, bay leaf, carrots, celery, chillies and garlic, sweat these off for about ten minutes to release all the flavours then add a third of the stock.
2 Add the kale at this point and more of the stock, just enough to reduce the kale down. Let this cook slowly for another 5 minutes or so then add the spinach and the rest of your stock; you want it to just cover the veg but not be too watery so you can hold back or add more if needed. This doesn't take too long until cooked through so make sure you keep an eye on it. When the kale seems like it's softened enough you can take the soup off the heat and add the parsley. Taste and add salt & pepper and your lemon zest and juice.
3 This should now taste perfect. All that's to be done now is to blend the soup serve and enjoy with a doorstop of crusty organic bread.
Really easy, organic and vegan 'homemade soup'.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article