🥘 Carole’s chicken and vegetable soup…

🥘 One pot | 🍽 Serves 4-6 | 🛒 12 ingredients | ⏱ 45 minutes | €4

This classic soup is a great winter warmer. Use any vegetables and meat leftover from Sunday lunch, try it with sweet potato and Brussels sprouts. Stuffing and sausages are good too.

You will need one large pot

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 100g streaky bacon, chopped
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 carrots, cut into rounds
• 2 sticks celery, roughly sliced
• 350g vegetable combination (swede, turnip, sweet potato, parsnip or celeriac, peeled and diced).
• 250g floury potatoes, sliced
• 1.5 litres chicken stock
• 1/2 a small Savoy cabbage cut into thin wedges
• 200g cooked chicken, cut into thin strips
• Salt and black pepper

Step by step:

1. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan. Add the bacon and fry until its crisp and brown, then add all the vegetables except the cabbage.
2. Stir the vegetables for a couple of minutes over a high heat, then pour in the stock and season with salt and pepper. Bring the soup to the boil and then simmer for 20 minutes.
3. Add the cabbage and cook for another 15 minutes. The potatoes will have broken up slightly and thickened the soup.
4. Finally add the cooked chicken and warm it through and serve right away.

Tips:

The main thing is to have fun with this sort of soup and use the recipe merely as a guide. Think pumpkin, leeks, cauliflower, kale and your favourite herbs, thyme, rosemary and parsley are great.

We used Kallo organic chicken stock (£1.79 in most supermarkets) with fabulous results.

If you are using a thermomix:

1. Roughly chop your vegetables
2. Place the bacon in the bowl and chop for 6 seconds, speed 6
3. Add the oil and cook for 3 minutes at 115 degrees C
4. Remove the bacon and add the cut vegetables to the bowl and chop for ten seconds at speed 4. Add back the bacon and stock and cook for 13 minutes at 90 degrees C
5. Add the chicken and cook for another three minutes at 95 degrees C
6. Serve in warmed bowls with a good grinding of black pepper or nutmeg

Tips

Don’t forget to use reverse enabled for cooking

Serve with basil and croutons, or a crusty baguette