Craft Advent, Day 14: Warming Winter Soup

Soup was always one of those hit and miss things for me. Sometimes weak and tasteless, sometimes full of flavour.

Darina Allen has a formula of a ratio of vegetables for her soup, but I never remember to measure out my veggies, I just chuck them into the pot and curl up in frustration when I remember that I didn’t weigh them in proper quantity.

I make my own stock, use flavoursome organic vegetables… so in theory, my soup should be consistently delicious.

Well, now it is, thanks to a great soup-tip I received from a friend. I asked her for her secret and this was it: Chop up all your veg: onions, carrots, potato, celery (most soups need celery for great flavour) and sweat them in about 100gms of butter, covered with a piece of baking paper (a butter wrapper works really well for this) and a lid on a low heat for as long as possible. Then when the veg are soft and practically melted, stir in some good stock , bring to the boil, then blitz in a liquidizer until smooth.

On these cold, cold (and even colder in our house since our boiler has decided to stop working. Thank goodness for the stove) days, this is the perfect food, served with delicious soda bread (recipe here) from the oven, slathered in real butter.

mmmmmmmmm!