soup’s on! 3 garden-to-freezer recipes
TOO MANY BEANS? Kale galore? Tomatoes finally ripening faster than you can use them fresh? Make soup, and freeze it—my favorite and most satisfying way to preserve the harvest, since there’s hardly a winter day when I don’t feel like a bowl of soup. Three favorite, easy recipes to turn your garden into right now:
- My basic vegetable soup, taught to me by my food-writer friend Irene Sax, is loaded with carrots, onions, green beans (and/or peas if you have them), dry beans, leafy greens or broccoli or both, plus tomatoes.
- My friend Katrina Kenison’s lentil soup incorporates ‘Butternut’ winter squash, tomatoes, leek, and spices including saffron, turmeric, cumin and more.
- Anna Thomas’s sweet potato-greens-sage soup makes great use of anything leafy and green—chard, kale, leafy broccolis such as ‘Spigariello’—plus garden-fresh sage, onions and sweet potatoes, all blended into a delicious puree.
I made vegetable soup and also tomatoe soup which I put in the freezer. Love having these in Jan and Feb. So great to remember summer through tasting.
Yum! Off I go to make lentil soup!
Does anyone have a basic recipe for plain tomatoe soup?
I love my roasted veggie soup!! The last batch was tomatoes, onions, garlic, red bell pepper, and zucchini – all from my garden except the bell pepper. Chop everything up in medium pieces, add olive oil, salt and pepper, and some red pepper flakes. Roast at 400 until soft. Pour everything, including the juices, into your Vitamix or blender and give it a whirl. Add chicken broth and buzz it again. I add a good size spoon of sour cream, also. Beyond delish!!
Is spinach, chick peas and tomatoes a soup?
Just made the lentil soup. yum.
Can chick peas, spinach and tomatoes be a soup?
Margaret, sure… Those would make a yummy bean soup. Cook chickpeas in chicken or veggie broth, plus an onion. When the beans are soft, re season with salt n pepper, add chopped fresh spinach, diced tomatoes. Or top the beans with cooked spinach and diced steamed tomatoes (steamed with garlic clove, olive oil, salt n pepper sounds good to me)
Thanks, Sha — and I love chickpeas! Good idea.
Nothing tastes better than a good hot bowl of homemade vegetable soup on a cold winter day! These recipes look delicious.
I make soup all the time using whatever I have growing, in storage or leftover and some vegetarian vegetable bouillon. My husband even likes soup now and the secret is–oyster crackers!