Name: Meat and vegetable soup
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 30 min
Ingredients: 1 large onion (chopped); 200 g lean lamb or beef fillet (diced 1cm thick); ½ teaspoon paprika; ¼ teaspoon turmeric; ¼ teaspoon ground coriander; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; ¼ teaspoon cumin; 2 carrots; 2-3 potatoes; 1 zucchini; 2 sticks celery; 1 cup mushrooms (good handful); 2 cups chicken or vegetable broth; 1-2 cups boiling water; juice of half a lemon; mild olive oil; salt to taste

There are situations where you need some quick soup. The kind of soup where you need to feed your family within half an hour of chopping that onion.

Honest, hearty humble soup. Not the type that comes ready out of can (Yes I disapprove of canned soup sorry).

This meat and vegetable soup that was so delicious, my ten year old devoured it and he doesn't even like onions.

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Ingredients
Instructions
Variations
Top tips
📖 Recipe

Ingredients

The basic veggies are onion, carrot, potato, celery...and then if you add zucchini (courgette) and mushrooms, it becomes something glorious.

You can choose either lamb or beef for the meat, you don't need much just little pieces to run through the soup and change up the texture.

I used lean fillet of lamb which I chopped into pieces around 1 cm long. I sautéed these with the onion and let them simmer with the broth.

I would not use mince meat in this soup for some reason it doesn't complement the texture.

Speaking of the broth, I always prefer to use chicken broth (I'd frozen a homemade batch from before) but you can use beef or vegetable if you wish.

A little powdered vegetable broth also works well. No more than ½ a teaspoon to be exact.

Instructions

With soups, and other dishes that have multiple vegetables, you have to mentally cook it backwards and see how much cooking time each one needs.

If you put them all in at once, this is just sloppy cooking and I won't eat it.

Prepare all the vegetables, sauté onions in mild olive oil

Dice the meat into small chunks around 1cm, brown with the onions for a few minutes

Add carrots, celery, zucchini, then the broth, and finally the potatoes and mushrooms

Simmer for 30 minutes in total, add squeeze of lemon and enjoy

Start with the onions, then carrots, zucchini and celery. Once these simmer with the spices and broth for around 10 minutes, add the potatoes and mushrooms for another 15 minutes before the end.

Variations

They beauty of soup is its versatility and you can easily make some adaptations. Here are some varieties I have tried

Extra veg - sometimes I adapt this into a deluxe vegetable soup and add swiss chard, sweetcorn or peas.
Vermicelli - this fine pasta is often used to thicken soups and sometimes I add in half a cup along with the potatoes.
Spicy - add ¼ teaspoon of cayenne or red chilli powder to make it fire

Top tips

When you chop the vegetables keep them relatively chunky, so they can sit nicely on a spoon with a few of their friends.

If you chop them too small, they will overcook too quickly. Too big and it becomes awkward to eat.

You can vary the consistency of the soup by adding more broth or water. I like mine quite soupy and top up the broth with water to give everything enough room to cook in.

Before you add too much salt, taste it and make relevant adjustments as shop bought broths have different salt levels.

Always taste the soup before you turn off the heat, usually the potatoes will tell you if it's done. A squeeze of lemon juice at the end will help lift all of the flavours and bring out their best.

📖 Recipe

5 from 1 vote