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'.