We recently had to take a pot of Vegetarian Soup to my daughter’s kindergarten class for their Winter weekly soup day. Some people – including some children – think they don’t like vegetarian dishes. There must be some meat! Well let me tell you, the kids loved this soup. In fact, one mother emailed me to ask for the recipe, saying her daughter wasn’t a big eater and even less so a soup eater, but she came home raving about this soup. My daughter is also not much of a soup eater, but she too loves this dish.
Vegetable Noodle Soup
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 lge onion, finely diced
- 3-4 sticks of celery, finely chopped
- 2-3 carrots, finely chopped
- 2 litres vegetable stock (I “cheated” and used a store bought variety with no artificial flavours, colours etc, but use your own if you prefer – you may then need to add some salt, and experiment with the amount of extra water, depending on the concentration of your stock. The one I use here in Australia is Campbell’s ‘Real Stock’)
- 1/2 litre or so extra water
- 250g noodles – I use a very thin gluten free spaghetti which I break up, but you can use whatever you like, or mix it up – sometimes use small plain noddles, sometime use long egg noodles…
Instructions
- Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan if you have one that can double as a skillet, or just in an ordinary pan, over a medium-high heat.
- Sauté the onion, carrot and celery.
- Add the stock (put it into a large pot first if up if sautéd it in a pan!).
- Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer slowly for a couple of hours, with the lid on.
- Do a taste test and add some extra water – I usually add about two cups (a half litre)
- Cook the noodles separately.
I use San Remo Gluten Free Spaghetti, though we are not gluten free in general, but they tend to stick together if you leave them cooked for even a short time, so as soon as I drain them I swirl some olive oil through them. I break up the spaghetti before cooking so it is in 1-2 inch lengths. - I add the noodles to the bowls separately and then pour on the soup, so that the soup isn’t all soaked up by the pasta in the pot, but if there is some left to freeze it’s fine to add the noodles in – or, you can just cook up some noodles when you re-heat the left overs.
Serve with some lovely crusty bread with real butter. Yum!
Variations
This is actually a variation on my chicken noodle soup. To turn it back into chicken noodle, you can either
- Use chicken stock instead of vegetable stock and add about 3oog of chopped chicken thigh fillets, or
- Make your chicken stock out of a left over roast chicken carcass (and some vegies), and just add all the left over chicken meat to the soup.
Note: All the ingredients listed are a bit vague in quantity – that’s because the exact quantity really doesn’t matter that much, as long as you start with a good stock. Just experiment and you’ll figure out how you like it. Or do what I do and make it up each time!
