This is an easy and healthy soup with simple ingredients and yet is tasty and flavourful. The toasted croutons made with fatfree baguette slices, rubbed with garlic adds the most needy crunch and attraction for this soup. A long 2 feet baguet would be just enough for a couple with 2 small kids. This soup can be made really hearty with lots of ingredients like cannellini beans, pasta/noodles and any other favourite vegetables/meats your family likes.
This soup works like a miracle for my kids when they r sick with diarrhea, as it can be made without oils/fats and vegetables are well cooked and also bread is a very good diarrhea safe food. My kids love this soup and when everything sweet and fat is restricted, they would savor this dish with great excitment.
Celery sticks - 2 chopped thin
Onion - 1 big chopped small
Carrots - 2 to 3 chopped small
Tomato - 1 big chopped
Bay leaves - 2
cloves - 2
Cinnamon - 2 , 1 inch pieces
Oil - 1 tbsp (optional)
Chicken or vegetable broth - 1 QT, I use Swanson broths with low sodium and 99% fat free.
Method:
- In a deep soup pot, add oil and saute the dry spices, cinnamon, cloves and bay leaves for a min, followed by chopped onions, carrots, celery, salt and pepper - cook until they are half done.
- If you want to make it fatfree, instead of oil fill the pot with 3 cups of water and add spices n vegetables and cook until they are half done.
- If u want to add any meat, add it along with the veggies and cook.
- Then add chopped tomatoes and fill the soup pot with chicken/veg broth and water, enough to make the amount of soup you want. For the vegetables i added, it almost made 3 QT pot soup. Finally adjust the salt and close the lid for 5 to 10 mins and it should be done. If you add tomatoes along with the vegetables, in the end you wont be seeing any tomato pieces, but some rolled up skins.
- If you want to make this soup an all in one meal, you can add noodles or pasta along with the vegetables and cook until they are done. Its upto the cook to decide, when is the right time to add pastas, as each one has a different cooking time.
- You can serve the soup topped with some tender celery leaves or any of your favourite herb. Dont forget to serve toasted croutons, rubbed with a fresh garlic, this bread is the most sought after ingredient in this dish.
- For small kids, just chop up the croutons into tiny bread crumbs and drop them in the soup little at a time, so that they too enjoy the crunch in all the bread pieces.
- My son, wanted some broccoli in this soup, so i just dropped tiny pieces into the very hot soup served in his bowl and left it for sometime, that heat was almost enough to cook the broccoli. If u want it little soft, microwave it for few more mins.