Soup Recipe

 

This is just a quick post that may help anyone who needs a good and tried recipe for soup; it is based upon Tomato Soup, but the advantage of this recipe is that it can be adapted to almost anything you wish to use. In the cold and wet there is nothing better than a bowl of hot soup and a crusty bread-roll. The recipe and measurements are from the US and are thus plain, clear and without the need for vast amounts of 'accessories' nor any kind of measuring scales or jug - just a cup, a teaspoon and a tablespoon. Why can't we here in England take a leaf from their book and simplify our measurements to things readily available and easily carried on a camping trip too?

INGREDIENTS - 1

About 6 fresh tomatoes (homegrown is best, of course).

1 Onion (I use red onions but whatever is preferred)

Salt & Pepper to taste.

A spoonful of Olive Oil to help the cooking process (another type of cooking oil could be used I guess).

Put these ingredients into a small saucepan and heat until the onions are soft, take off the heat. Now, the recipe that I used said to drain off the liquid and set this aside for use, which works alright and tastes alright. However, so as not to waste the tomatoes and onions, on the second attempt, I put the whole thing into a blender and blended it until it was fine. This works as well, and tastes slightly stronger. (It has another advantage which I will talk of at the end.)

INGREDIENTS - 2

A tablespoon of butter or margarine.

2 tablespoons of plain flour.

2 cups of milk.

Melt the butter/marge in a saucepan, add the flour and stir into a paste. Slowly whisk in the milk, and heat slowly until this thickens. Now the tomato-mix can be added to this (slowly), the whole thing stirred and mixed, keeping on a low heat until it is hot enough. 

This recipe has ingredients most people have, and is thus very easy to put together. It also has a distinct advantage in that the first part can be made up with the ingredients doubled, thus leaving some over which can be put into the fridge and should last a few days ready to make another soup by making up the second part. I found that blending the tomato-onions made much more, and used only half to make the soup. The rest is ready to use for another soup.

Another advantage to this is that this need not be restricted to tomato soup, because almost anything can be substituted - chicken, rabbit, carrots, vegetables etc. The second part being milk thickened by flour means that a thick soup can be made and the milk makes it very tasty; of course, to make it even more tasty cream can be used. Adding red wine is another idea. There is room for experiment, and herbs could be used for flavour.

Although I have not tried this, but I guess it would be possible to put the soup into small paper cups and freeze them; this way they could be defrosted as a Cold Soup for warm summer days. I very often leave meat frozen when I go camping, since this keeps for a longer period whilst defrosting; I've never had problems doing this.