I love making soup! I love that you can just dump in a selection of ingredients and after an hour or so of simmering you have a delicious meal.
Soups have become so much faster to make since I started canning a few years ago. Having garden fresh ingredients year-round is amazing. I also can up combinations of ingredients that I typically use together such as, leek and potato soup base or canned chicken and gravy. Since they are already cooked it is just a matter of mixing the flavors and warming, and ta-da you have a meal. I plan to include canning recipes later in the year as the canning is happening.
Here is the start of the soup, canned leek and potato soup, canned turkey stock, blanched and frozen (now thawed) garden fresh peas, carrots, corn (not pictured) and parsnips.
Ingredients:
2 TBSP Butter
2 C each chopped carrots and parsnips
3 stalks of celery chopped
1 onion (yellow) chopped
2 C chopped potato
2 C Peas
1 C corn
2 qt poultry stalk or base
2 bay leaves
1 tsp Parsley
1/2 tsp Thyme and crushed Rosemary
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp Garlic powder
3 C Shredded cooked chicken or turkey
Optional – 1 pt milk and 1/2 C heavy cream
In a Dutch oven or soup pan of your choice, melt the butter, then sauté the onions careful not to burn them. Next add the celery carrot and parsnips.
As you can see above, I am not even following my own instructions, that is because I am using my canned leek and potato which contains leeks, potatoes, celery and water.
After a few minutes of cooking the veggies add the stock and potatoes along with the herbs.
Let that cook together until the potatoes are done. At this point you can add the chicken, peas and corn.
Depending on the color or taste that you want you can either add the milk and cream to make it more of chowder or omit if that is your desire. I like it both ways. I also prefer it a bit thicker so I will add in 1 TBSP of cornstarch mixed with cold water to thicken the soup.
You can serve with dumplings or biscuits. My family loves buttermilk biscuits and look for any excuse for me to make them, alas they were eaten so fast no pictures were taken to show.
Guten Appetit!
