National Homemade Soup Day

I could eat soup every day – “because soup is good food”. Thanks to Twitter’s Foodimentary, I found out that today is the day to celebrate homemade soup.

Soup is one of the easiest things you can make at home and a fantastic way to add vegetables to your diet. You don’t have to be a chef to prepare your very own tasty creation. If you can cut vegetables, boil water and stir, you can make soup.

Most soups can be made using the three step process. Step 1: cut vegetables. Step 2: sauté for few minutes. Step 3:add spices, water and/or stock and cook. For creamy soups, you can finish with a fourth step which is to blend the soup.

Could it be any simpler? Celebrate with your own creation tonight.

Here are a couple of my favorite soups:

Butternut squash soup:

1 butternut squash, cut into small cubes, sauté with ½ an onion. Add a little bit of nutmeg, a pinch of cayenne pepper, fresh ginger and then cover with ½ water, ½ chicken or vegetable stock. For a Thai twist on this soup, replace the chicken stock with 2 cups of coconut milk and a squeeze of lime juice. Once all the vegetables are cooked, you can use a blender or immersion blender to cream the soup. To serve, top with fresh cilantro for the Thai inspired one or with roasted almonds or pine nuts for the regular one.

Japanese spinach noodle soup:

(This is a variation on Harumi Kurihara’s recipe from Hurumi’s Japanese Cooking)

Bring to a boil ½ water, ½ chicken stock. Add a teaspoon of Sake. Throw in Japanese Buckwheat noodles (or other thin pasta that you like), let simmer until noodles are cooked. Add 4 big handfuls of chopped baby spinach and let simmer for about 1 minute – just until spinach wilts. Sprinkle a few drops of chili oil and enjoy.