Baked (Jacket) Potato Soup - for Leftover Baked Potatoes

I love eating jacket potatoes, especially in winter, but even in summer they can be a particularly nice lunch with sour cream and chives (or something similar), cooling tuna mayo or homemade coronation chicken.

Baked potatoes are also a great barbecue staple, cooked either on the coals or in the oven, as everyone can have their own and top it with whatever they like; they are great even just with butter. But it's easy to cook too many and have some baked potatoes left - here is a great recipe to use up leftover baked potatoes.

You can make a delicious soup with the potatoes that you can top with anything you like and freeze the soup for another day (or take it in a flask to eat at work).

If you want to make this soup from scratch, there's a quicker way than baking a potato in the oven for an hour or more, which you won't want to do on a hot day. Simply simmer a whole potato in a pan of milk for about 20-25 minutes until the potato is tender.

Mash the potato into the soup, or put the potato into a food processor with some of the milk and pulse, then return to the pan and stir in with the rest of the milk. Season to taste.

If you are using leftover potatoes, chop the potatoes and put into a pan of milk so the potatoes are just covered and bring the milk to simmering point. Remove from the heat allow to cool; put the potatoes and some of the milk into a food processor as before then return to the pan and stir through, and reheat if you are eating this now.

 

Serve the soup in bowls and top with whatever jacket potato toppings you liked - eg cooked diced bacon, sour cream and chive or a sprinkling of grated cheese.

Slow Cooker Thai Chicken Soup

I just wanted to quickly share this recipe with you as I've been making a lot of soups for lunch lately and this one is really good. It's a Betty Crocker recipe which you can find here; one of the things I like about it is that you put everything into the slow cooker and don't even need to stir.

It has quite a few ingredients (I left out the mushrooms as I don't like them) so you do have to do a little bit of prep; you also need to sear the chicken in a separate pan first unless you use chicken that is already cooked, which is what I did. Once you've done all that you pretty much just leave it to cook in the slow cooker.

 

There's definitely a kick to this from the ginger and curry paste; I would probably make it a little more mild next time. The chunky veg and pieces of chicken make this a meal in itself and I enjoyed it for my lunch at work over a couple of days.

Chicken Broccoli Pasta Soup

This soup is definitely a meal in itself - in fact it's barely a soup! The good thing about it is that you can thin it down as much as you like - so if you want something really chunky and filling (that's more like a bowl of pasta than soup) you can have it, or if you want to be able to drink your lunch rather than eat it with a fork (let alone a spoon) then you can do that too!

I came across a recipe for chicken broccoli alfredo soup on Food.com and decided to make it for my lunch last Sunday; I did reduce the quantity of the ingredients but still had enough left for the rest of the week!

Instead of half-and-half which you can't get in the UK, I used mainly milk with a dash of double cream. The resulting soup was deliciously creamy. I didn't have any farfalle pasta so I used macaroni which worked well.

This was a very filling soup that tasted rich and creamy and keeps well for a few days afterwards though you might find you need to add some water to thin it out again once it has been in the fridge for a while!

I'm sharing this with Cook Once Eat Twice, hosted by Corina at Searching for Spice.

10 Reasons to be Addicted to Soup - Winter Soup Recipes

 

This time of year there can sometimes be nothing better than a steaming bowl of soup - especially if it's one you've made yourself. Whether you're using up leftover veg or trying to persuade yourself to eat more veg (it's much easier blended, trust me!) or you on a diet and looking for a low fat recipe, there is so much you can do.

Here are ten of my favourite soup recipes. Check out number 7, it's something a bit different!

1. Chicken mulligatawny - adapted from a Weightwatchers recipe, really filling and robust

 

2. Slimming World cauliflower cheese soup - like cauliflower cheese? Then you will love this!

 

 

3. French onion soup - a classic. I made this after watching a film called Delicatessen. Using cider in the stock is an extra treat!

 

4. Cauliflower soup - a summertime recipe that works well in winter. Moomin flask optional!

 

 

5. Butternut squash soup - a very simple recipe using only a few ingredients - and what's more it's Slimming World.

 

6. Broccoli courgette and Stilton soup - how to sneak some hidden veg into your food!

 

 

7. Zuppa Toscana - a hearty Italian soup that I adapted to make lower in fat. With the sausages it's easily a meal in itself.

 

8. Spiced pumpkin soup  - another very simple recipe that uses leftover pumpkin from Halloween. Admittedly you probably can't get pumpkin at this time of year but if you have any in the freezer you can make this now, otherwise it might have to wait!

 

 

9. Mixed vegetable soup plus a recipe for homemade chilli and cheese bread. This is the easiest soup you can possibly make!

 

10. Slow cooker ham and potato soup - you can also make this on the hob. A great way to use up leftover ham or gammon from a roast.

 

 

What's your favourite kind of soup?

WeightWatchers Rosemary and Butterbean Soup

I've been trying to avoid bread and at the very least not taking sandwiches into work for lunch, which at this time of year means soups instead. I am a pretty fussy eater (for those who hadn't figured that out yet!) and often skip over recipes because they have ingredients I don't like. But, I figured, when you are blending everything together in a soup, you don't really know you are eating it, right? Especially if it isn't an ingredient with a strong overpowering taste.

So I decided to make this rosemary and bean soup from an old WeightWatchers recipe book called Simply Autumn. I used butterbeans, though you can also use cannellini or borlotti beans. I added a little plain yogurt at the end to thicken the soup but if you don't do this, it would be vegan - great for anyone doing #veganuary.

According to the WeightWatchers recipe book this has 3 points per portion.

To make two portions, here's what I did:

 

You need:
Fry Light (low-fat cooking spray)
2 cloves garlic with the skins left on
400g tin butter beans or cannellini beans
1/2 an onion, peeled and chopped into wedges
1/2 a lemon, cut in half
1 small handful rosemary
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 pint vegetable stock
2 tbsp. low fat plain yogurt (optional - no longer vegan if you use this)
salt, pepper

Preheat oven to 200C. Spray a roasting tin with Fry Light or similar. Put the garlic, butter beans, onion, lemon, rosemary and oregano into the pan, spray with more Fry Light, toss together and roast in the oven for 20 mins.

Take out of the oven and use a fork or wooden spoon to crush the softened garlic and lemon. Remove the garlic skin and lemon peel and discard.

Scrape everything into a blender and add the stock. Liquidize to make a soup; stir in the yogurt if desired and serve.

I'm sending this to Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes for her veggie soup challenge No Croutons Required.

Cheesy Broccoli Soup

I've made broccoli and stilton soup before but not used Cheddar in it. I decided to try another recipe from 'America's Most Wanted Recipes' - I went through a bit of a phase of using this book a few months back - and like many of the recipes in this book, it called for velveeta cheese. You can't get this in the UK and after reading a description online I decided that Cheddar was relatively close in flavour and texture.

Unusually, as broccoli soup is often vegetarian, and based on pretty much just broccoli and vegetable stock, this soup uses canned chicken soup as a base! It did taste really nice and though not as low calorie as the broccoli soup I would normally make it was very filling and would make a good lunch at this time of year - something you could take to work as well as enjoy at home.

To serve 4, you need:
4 cups water
2 cups potato, peeled and diced
1 chicken stock cube
I cup onion, peeled and diced
1 head broccoli, chopped
400ml can cream of chicken soup
300g Cheddar, grated

Heat the water, potato, stock cube, onion and broccoli in a large pan until the vegetables are tender. Stir in the soup and Cheddar and heat through, stirring occasionally, until the cheese has melted.

Oxo Butternut Squash and Coconut Milk Soup

Oxo is pretty much a store cupboard staple for me – I always have Oxo cubes and use them in all sorts of recipes. Recently I’ve come across Knorr stock pots and branched out a bit, so was pleased to be sent a selection of Oxo stock pots to try recently – and they even threw in an Oxo cookery book!

Oxo is an iconic brand in the UK and has been around pretty much forever. Did you know that Oxo was invented in the 1840s after a German chemist developed meat extract? And as official sponsor of the 1908 London Olympics, Oxo supplied marathon runners with fortifying drinks of Oxo (I can’t quite imagine drinking beef broth while running a marathon but never mind!). In the First World War, soldiers were given Oxo cubes in their ration kits.

The company has now launched three flavours of stock pots, which I would describe as a sort of concentrated gel. They are: garden vegetables with parsley and bay; beef with onion and rosemary; and chicken with garlic and thyme. They also do a range called ‘herbs and more’ of flavours like lemon and thyme, which are not stock but ‘flavour pots’, which I’d also like to try. The stock pots sell for around £1 for 4 from major supermarkets.

My only criticism is that once you open the pot, you have to use the whole thing – you could probably refrigerate the rest for a day or two, but as I only cook for one or two people, I often cut a traditional stock cube in half, wrap the other half back up and put it back in the box, and you can’t really do that with the stock pots. They do however add a real depth of flavour; you don’t have to boil a kettle and wait for the stock cube to resolve, as you can add them straight to a pan to melt. You do still need to add water or some other liquid (tinned tomatoes perhaps) as the flavour is quite concentrated.

They are really easy to use though and definitely gave a nice flavour to my recipe.

I was working from home one day just after they arrived so flicked through the Oxo cookery book and found something I could make from store cupboard ingredients: a spicy butternut squash soup with coconut milk. Be warned, it does have quite a kick from the coconut milk alone (so you could perhaps miss out the chilli).

To serve 4, you need:

1 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, chopped

1 small piece fresh ginger, peeled and chopped

½ red chilli, finely chopped

900g butternut squash, peeled and diced (seeds discarded)

1 Oxo Garden Vegetables with Parsley and Bay stock pot, made up with 500ml boiling water

400ml coconut milk, reserving 2 tbsp to serve

1 tbsp chopped fresh coriander to serve

Heat the oil in a large saucepan, add the onion, ginger, chilli and garlic, and fry for five minutes until softened. Add the butternut squash, stock and all but the 2 tbsp of coconut milk you are reserving.

Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes or until the squash is cooked.

Blend in a blender until smooth (you may need to do this in batches). Serve in bowls with half a tbsp. of coconut milk swirled on the top and sprinkle with the chopped coriander.

I'm sharing this recipe with various blog challenges: Meat Free Monday, hosted by Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes (who also runs the Food Blog Diary where you can find out about these challenges); Extra Veg, hosted by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours, and No Croutons Required, hosted this month by Lisa's Kitchen.

Sweet Potato Soup with Pomegranate and Sumac

Sumac is a spice I have only started using recently, and since I bought a packet I’ve kept a look out for any recipes that used it. When I was planning to have a vegan friend over for lunch (which didn’t actually happen in the end) I was looking for an easy recipe I could make in advance and heat up for lunch and came across this Sainsbury’s recipe for sweet potato, pomegranate and sumac soup.

As I’d bought the pomegranate already before the lunch was cancelled, I decided to go ahead and make it anyway and was glad I did! The soup did me a couple of days worth of lunches and was really filling and tasty.

To serve 2, you need:
half an onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/2 red chilli, deseeded and roughly chopped, or a pinch of dried chilli flakes or Very Lazy chopped chilli to taste
1/2 tsp sumac
1/2 tbsp. coconut oil
200g sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes
150g tomatoes, chopped - the recipe said to use vine tomatoes but I used tinned as I wanted to make this using store cupboard ingredients
400ml vegetable stock
1 tbsp. pomegranate molasses (available in big supermarkets)
to garnish:
pinch of sumac
pomegranate seeds
thin slice of lime

Fry the onion, garlic, chilli and sumac in the coconut oil and 1 tbsp. water until the onion has softened.

Add the sweet potatoes, tomatoes and stock. Bring to the boil and simmer until the sweet potato is soft.

 Add the pomegranate molasses and blend until smooth in a food processor or blender.

I returned the soup to the pan and added a little more water as it was too thick

Finally, garnish with pomegranate seeds and a slice of lime.

This was a really tasty, filling soup and has the added advantage of being both vegetarian and vegan.

I'm sharing this with Extra Veg, the blog challenge hosted by Michelle at Utterly Scrummy this month and also Helen at Fuss Free Flavours.

I'm also sending it to No Croutons Required, the soup and salad challenge hosted by Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes.

Slow Cooker Ham and Potato Soup

Just before Christmas I made slow cooker ham in Cherry Coke which was delicious. I deliberately cooked too much ham so I would have some left for another recipe the next day; if you have leftover ham from Christmas this is a great way to use it up (and any leftover potato and veg you have as well).

 

The quantities are easily adjusted depending on how much leftovers you have to use and how many people you are serving so my recipe is more of a rough guide.

I used:
2 cups leftover cooked ham, chopped
1 pork stock cube (you could also use chicken or vegetable)
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped (I used a raw carrot but you could use leftover cooked veg)
1 cup leftover mashed potato, cooked (you could also use leftover boiled or roast potatoes, or raw potatoes cut into small cubes)
1 cup milk
1/2 cup sour cream (you could also use leftover single or double cream)

Place all the ingredients in your slow cooker apart from the milk and cream, and add enough water to cover the veg.

Cook on high for 3 hours or medium for 5-6 hours.

When ready, take about half the soup out of the slow cooker and blend until smooth in a food processor.

 Return to the soup and mix in so it still has some chunks of meat and veg. Add the milk and cream and serve. You can add more water if you want the soup to be thinner but I liked it as it was.

I'm sharing this with the Slow Cooker Challenge, hosted by Lucy aka Baking Queen 74 as the theme is Christmas.

I'm also sending this to the No Waste Food Challenge hosted by Jen's Food as this recipe uses all sorts of leftovers.