Quick and Easy “Homemade” Soups
This time of year I love to make homemade soups and stews! To me there is nothing quite like homemade soup but because this is the busiest season for me, I barely have time to eat, let alone make even the fastest soups.
All you need for some quick and easy meals is to keep your pantry well stocked with canned soup and some odds and ends in your freezer.
Here are some examples of things to add to canned soup to make it taste homemade:
Chicken Noodle Soup
- Leftover chicken from the freezer
- Frozen vegetables
- Extra spices
Mushroom Soup
- Extra canned mushrooms, especially ones that are boiled in butter
- Extra spices
Cream of Potato Soup
- bacon bits
- Swiss or Cheddar cheese
- leftover boiled potatoes
- diluted with part chicken broth
- cooked broccoli florets
- carrots
- extra spices
Tomato Soup
- add a little butter
- diluted with milk instead of water
- American cheese
- frozen vegetables
Bean Soup
- Cubed ham, bacon or bacon bits
- onions or French fried onion rings
- extra beans
- dash of hot sauce
Vegetable Soup
- leftover hamburger, chicken, turkey or most any meat
- add extra vegetables from the freezer
- tomato juice or V8 juice
- extra spices
More Soup Tips:
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Drop spoonfuls of stuffing mix into boiling soup for small dumpling-like additions.
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Add dumplings made with 2 cups baking mix and 2/3 cup milk to boiling chicken noodle soup or veggie soup. Cook 10 minutes uncovered and 10 minutes covered. (See Dining on a Dime for more dumpling recipes.)
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Keep cans of chunky soup and pour over mashed potatoes, noodles or rice, adding a little of your own leftover meat.
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Keep homemade or store bought croutons on hand to add extra flavor to any soup.
For lots of great recipes and tips about scratch cooking and frugal living, take a look at our Dining On A Dime Cookbook here! You’ll find almost 500 pages of very helpful information to help you learn to work all kinds of magic in the kitchen!
I just love your news letter. I really thought there was nothing about saving money that I could learn, because I’m so good at it. But I have received great tips from your web site. The other day, for the first time, I actually folded a fitted sheet, which I learned from you.
One thing I would really love would be a recipe for lentil soup. I saw you have lots of soup recipes, but I’m looking for a lentil soup recipe that’s nice and spicy. And it would be great if it could be made in a crock pot.
Anyway, thank you for your news letter. I really love it!
This is a Polish recipe I thought I’de share.
Dill Pickle Soup (Zupa Ogorkowa)
6 cups beef broth
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk
1 egg yolk
2 Tablespoons butter, softened
4 large dill pickles, shredded
2/3 cup dill pickle liquid
2-1/2 cups already boiled, cooked potatoes
2 carrots, sliced
1/2 teaspoon parsley, chopped
1/2 teaspoon dill, chopped
3 Tablespoons sour cream (optional)
Bring the broth to a boil. Mix the flour with the milk and add to broth. Bring to boil again. Remove from heat.
Mix the egg yolk with the softened butter and add to broth mixture. Add the shredded pickles, pickle liquid, cooked potatoes and carrots. Heat to hot, but not boiling. Add sour cream if using. Garnish with parsley and dill.
Serve with dark rye or pumpernickel bread.
This soup is very tasty, so don’t be scared off by the name.
Tawra would probably love this soup. She is crazy for dill pickles. She was just a baby and she loved sucking on dill pickles and still loves them to this day. Actually as strange as dill pickle soup may sound it makes sense because it is just like having garlic, dill and other spices to your soup. The same way I love to add dill pickles to my potato salad because of the dill and garlic flavor.
Bea we LOVE this Pickle soup! My first husband’s Polish Grandmother (both deceased) lived in Brooklyn & taught me how to make this delicious soup. She also taught me how to make Polish Borscht the way she made it. They became 2 of my favorite soups and my kids and nearly all of my grandkids also love them. Some are also starting to ask me how to make these soups now that they live in their own homes. Thank you for sharing this. I think about the only thing different is that she taught me to use heavy cream rather than sour cream but I may try it your way. She gave me “sour salt” (what she called it) to use in both of these soups so I figure it probably ends up tasting nearly the same.
broccoli cheddar soup.
1tbsp margarine
1tbsp flour
1 can or 2 cups chicken broth
chopped broccoli amount you like. you can also add cauliflower as well.
make a rue with flour and margarine (butter)
stir in soup stock and vegetables.
cook till vegetables are soft.
blend till smooth or the texture you like. I like chunks but husband likes it smooth.
add a cup of milk or cream and about 1/2 cup of cheddar cheese. stir till hot and serve you can garnish with a bit of cheese but not necessary for taste.
takes about 15 min. from start to finish.
I sometimes use cheddar powder if I don’t feel like grating cheese and Don says it is better flavour.
Now this is a man who hates broccoli and cauliflower with a passion. hates the smell and the taste and yet he eats this every night when he is night shift and gets home at 4am. So it is a good soup to get vegetables into someone who thinks they hate them. I think it is a texture thing because I hate it blended down but love it with chunks left a bit.
I also use frozen veg. mixed cauliflower and broccoli so that cuts down the cost and the time even more.
to make it richer use a cream but the recipe calls for skim milk. So that part is up to you.
It probably is a texture thing. I hate onions because of the texture of them but have no problem with the taste of onion salt and there are many veggies I love raw but can’t stand to eat them cooked. I always as a child use to wonder when people would make a pizza and cover it with veggies and say your kids will love it and they won’t even be able to tell there are veggies on it – did they think I was blind and had no taste buds. I could see them a mile away and if they tried covering them up I could tell the minute it hit my mouth.
What I hated even worse was people who knew I hated onions they would make something and say “I chopped the onions up real small so you won’t notice them.” As if them being smaller made a difference. I would rather have them in huge chunks because at least that way I could pick them out. People would say I was a picky eater because I didn’t like things with onions in it. But there are only a couple of veggies like that and beans which have that texture that I don’t eat. I always laugh at them and say “I love liver, bone marrow…. do you?” Usually it ends up they are way more picky over things then what I ever thought about being. :) We all have different things we hate. I tell parents don’t panic in the food department. The older I got the more I learned to love.
I agree with you about the Dill Pickle Soup Jill being just like adding certain spices to the soup, and pickles are just cucumbers anyway, so the soup isn’t that strange.
As far as foods that I don’t like, there aren’t many. I don’t like shell fish. Can’t eat it anyway because of an allergy, but the way some of them look turn me off. Lobsters remind me of big cockroaches. Yuck.
Oh Jill what you said about Tawra and dill pickles reminds me of an “I Love Lucy” show I was watching a couple of weeks ago. Lucy was pregnant and had Ricky get her a mango milkshake and a dill pickle to dunk in it. He did, and Ricky made all kinds of faces while Lucy ate the combination, but Lucy really liked it. It was funny.
To a can of pork and beans, add sliced hot dogs or better yet smoked sausage, dice up some onion, throw in some diced green pepper if you’ve got any. maybe a little garlic powder. Serve over a slice of bread. Cheap and fills you up :)
A very simple soup: (the amounts are up to you, however much you need)
Ground beef
Low sodium broth powder + water
Dried vegetable flakes
Jar of salsa
Garlic powder or other seasonings to taste
Brown the beef, put in kettle with broth, add vegetable flakes, salsa, garlic powder and any other seasonings you like. Simmer for about an hour or put in the crockpot.
One of my fave homemade soups is Sausage Cabbage Soup:
Fry around a 1/2 lb of Jimmy Dean HOT sausage (you can use mild if you don’t care for spicy)
Add 4 cups chicken broth
Chop about half of a med. cabbage to size pcs you prefer and add to soup
Chop 2 med. potatoes to small cubes, and add to soup
Simmer until cabbage is done to the softness you prefer (I bring to boil, turn down and gently boil for about 12 more minutes
When soup is done, cut up a pkg. of Cream cheese in it, cover until nearly melted, then stir to distribute until creamy.
Optional things you can add are chopped onions, garlic, celery, salt, pepper. But with the Jimmy Dean sausage you don’t really have to add much of anything except salt and pepper and it’s still great.)