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Soups are one of the best ways to use up produce from your garden harvest or bulk purchase. They can be enjoyed fresh, frozen, or canned with a pressure canner.
Soup is comforting, nutritious, and versatile. It is easy to swap out ingredients based on what you have on hand. This makes it ideal for gardeners, bulk-buyers, and other seasonal eaters.
Learn my tried-and-true process for making soups, a great template for your souper adventures!
Feel free to substitute ingredients and to skip, modify, combine, or add categories as needed. This guide is intended as a base and an inspiration.
Note that it is perfectly acceptable to chop everything up and throw it in the broth in no particular order. The below method is simply what works best for the most delicious, flavorful soups that strike a balance between taste and practicality. This method is great for when you have enough time and energy to add ingredients one step at a time but not enough to bother with fancier soups such as creamy soups or chilis.
In this article, we'll cover the following steps of the basic soup-making process:
- Step 1: Gather Supplies and Start Oil
- Step 2: Alliums and Optional Uncooked Meat
- Step 3: Roots and Other Thick Veggies
- Step 4: Nightshades and Stalks
- Step 5: Extras — Fresh Herbs, Precooked Meats, and Fruits
- Step 6: Broth
- Step 7: Dried Herbs and Heat Changes
- Step 8: Grains
- Step 9: Leafy Greens and Flowers
- A Note About Simple Soups
Let's get right into it!
Step 1: Gather Supplies and Start Oil
To make a soup, you need a stockpot or large saucepan, a cutting board, and a knife for chopping your veggies.
Personally I love the GreenPan brand. I currently use this set, which includes multiple stockpots and saucepans, with my induction cooktop.
Formerly I used and loved this similar set, which is great for non-induction stoves.
Place the stockpot or saucepan on the stove, turn the heat on, and start your oil. I usually use olive oil or sesame oil. You can also use butter or ghee.
The amount of oil depends on the size of the soup you are making. Be sure to allow enough oil to cover and sauté all of the produce you will use for Steps 2-5.
Step 2: Alliums and Optional Uncooked Meat
Chop or dice your alliums and add them to the pot.
By alliums, I mean plants in the Alliaceae (onion) family such as onions, leeks, garlic, and ramps.
Chives are much smaller and thinner than other alliums, which means they cook faster, so they can be added either now or in Step 5. It depends on whether you prefer their taste and texture when cooked for a longer time or a shorter time.
If you want to add meat to your soup that has not been previously cooked, now is the time for that as well. Chop or break the raw meat into small pieces and add it in with the alliums.
Stir the pot, allow the contents to sauté for 2-5 minutes, and move on to the next step.
Step 3: Roots and Other Thick Veggies
Next, chop or dice and add your root vegetables to the pot.
This includes veggies like carrots, parsnips, beets, and radishes as well as tubers like potatoes, ginger, wild ginger, and Jerusalem artichokes.
It also includes other extra-thick vegetables like pumpkins and other winter squashes.
Stir the pot, allow the veggies to sauté for 2-5 minutes, and move on to the next step.
Step 4: Nightshades and Stalks
Next, chop or dice and add produce from the Solanaceae (nightshade/tomato) family such as tomatoes, tomatillos, eggplants, and peppers like bell peppers and jalapeños.
Potatoes are the exception to this step since they are roots that were added in Step 3.
Other produce that has a similar thickness to tomatoes and peppers can be added in this step as well. Some examples are celery and fennel stalks.
Stir the pot, allow the veggies to sauté for 2-5 minutes, and move on to the next step.
Step 5: Extras
This step includes items you may have on hand such as fresh herbs, precooked meats, and/or culinary fruit.
I highly recommend picking fresh herbs to throw in with any soup you make. They elevate the flavor and nutrient content of the soup like nothing else. Also, some herbs like dill, fennel leaves, and cleavers taste completely different when used fresh.
Fruit can be fresh, frozen, or canned.
Meats added in this step should be already cooked unless you plan to simmer your soup for several hours.
The difference between the ingredients added here and those added in Step 9 is that this step's ingredients will cook with the vegetables for the entire simmering time, while the Step 9 additions will only cook for a few minutes. So add ingredients now if you want them to significantly impact the flavor and if the ingredients are not too fragile to simmer for a longer time.
Stir the pot and move on to the next step. You do not need to sauté the additions from this step like you did with Steps 2-4.
Step 6: Broth and Heat Changes
Add broth or stock to the pot. This can be homemade or storebought broth. It can be chicken broth, veggie broth, beef broth, lamb broth, or any other type of broth or stock.
Be sure to leave at least a gap of at least 10% of the pot's area between the top of the liquid and the top of the pot.
Juices, smoothies, infusions, and/or decoctions can be added to the liquid if desired.
Stir the pot and move on to the next step.
Step 7: Dried Herbs and Heat Changes
Next, add dried herbs and spices to the soup. Remember that this is a large pot of soup, so use significantly more spice than you would for a smaller dish for the best flavor.
Stir the pot. Then bring the entire soup to a boil.
As soon as the soup boils, reduce it to a simmer.
Your soup will cook on a simmer for the rest of its cook time. For a crunchy soup, simmer it for about 30 minutes. I prefer a more tender soup, so I simmer my soups for 1-2 hours or more.
A longer cook time means that the soup's produce will become more tender and that its broth will become more flavorful since there is more time for the ingredients' flavors to infuse into the broth.
Step 8: Grains
Add 1 or more grains such as rice, amaranth, quinoa, sorghum, oats, buckwheat, or wild rice to the pot. Pastas such as orzo, egg noodles, or penne can also be added at this point.
To determine when to add the grains, subtract the time needed for the grains to cook from when you will stop simmering your soup.
For most pastas, this will be 10-15 minutes.
For most other grains like rice and quinoa, this will be around 20-30 minutes.
Certain grains like wild rice may need longer to cook. In my experience, wild rice usually takes 45-60 minutes, sometimes longer.
Add your pasta and/or other grains and continue simmering.
Step 9: Leafy Greens and Edible Flowers
When about 10-15 minutes of your cook time remain, add your leafy greens and flowers.
Some examples of leafy greens are spinach, chard, lambsquarter, kale, orach, cucumber or squash leaves, and tatsoi.
Some examples of edible flowers are violets, calendula, dahlias, and nasturtiums.
These ingredients are added at this point because their thin, fragile construction causes them to take on an odd, unpleasant texture if cooked for too long. They also do not add significantly to the flavor of the soup.
Then, 10-15 minutes after you add the leafy greens and flowers, turn off the heat of your stove or cooktop.
And enjoy! You just made a soup.
A Note About Simple Soups
I love to make soups using the above method. I think it's especially great for peak harvest seasons, when many crops are ready at once and when farmstands, farmers markets, and even supermarkets have great deals on in-season produce.
At other times, a simple soup may be just what you need. Simple soups usually use 2-4 ingredients, excluding broth. Broth should always be added and is always implied, although it is usually not specifically mentioned on the simple uses pages.
For example, our Simple Uses for Tomatoes page mentions a simple soup of tomatoes and fennel with optional alliums. Likewise, the Simple Uses for Carrots page suggests a simple soup of "carrots, bell peppers, and orach or another leafy green."
For most simple soups, follow the steps in this article, skipping any steps that don't apply. The tomato-fennel example would skip Steps 3, 5, 8, and 9 as well as Step 2 if alliums were not added. But it would still follow the remaining steps.
You also might start with the combination on the plant's simple uses page and add any ingredients you have on hand. For example, you might make the tomato-fennel soup and throw the dried dill in your cabinet or the fresh basil growing on your windowsill in with it.
Sometimes we mention simple puréed soups, which involve adding the mentioned ingredients to a blender along with broth. For example, one of the Simple Uses for Parsnips states, "Make a puréed soup with parsnips, cucumbers, and purslane." So you would add parsnips, cucumbers, purslane, and broth to a blender. Because parsnip tops and cucumber leaves are edible, they could also be added to the blender. The puréed soup can then be enjoyed cold or gently heated by simmering. Puréed soups tend to be milder in flavor since they do not include simmering or sautéing time, but they are hard to beat for convenience!
We may also use a more specific term such as nightshade soup or root veggie soup. These terms are mainly used as fun memory aids. These soups will still follow the same instructions as the "for most simple soups" explanation above.
Read More
Some common soup veggies and herbs have uses in other culinary and herbal preparations. Read more in our simple uses pages for these plants:
- Simple Uses for Onions
- Simple Uses for Garlic
- Simple Uses for Carrots
- Simple Uses for Celery
- Simple Uses for Potatoes
- Simple Uses for Parsnips
- Simple Uses for Winter Squash
- Simple Uses for Wild Ginger
- Simple Uses for Parsley
- Simple Uses for Basil
And check out these articles for other ways to use and preserve your harvest:
- The Interesting Salad Protocol: How to Build an Interesting Salad
- The Interesting Hot Cereal: How to Make Your Grains More Fun
- How to Preserve Your Harvest: Canning
- How to Preserve Your Harvest: Fermentation
- How to Preserve Your Harvest: Freezing
- Quick-pickling: How to Quick-pickle Your Produce
- How to Make an Herbal Decoction
- How to Make an Herbal Syrup