Hearty Vegetable Soup

Hello, lovelies! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and you got to indulge in all sorts of deliciousness. If you're anything like me, maybe you're feeling like it's time for a bit of a reset, time to get your eating back on track in honor of the New Year. And if that's the case, then you've come to the right place because today I'm going to be sharing one of my very favorite recipes for a super simple but super nourishing hearty vegetable soup. Now I have to tell you this soup was actually inspired by my cleaning out the fridge. I love to clean out the fridge in honor of the New Year. I just feel like it gives me a nice fresh start with my eating. And in doing so, I found all sorts of tasty produce that had sort of seen better days. And so I thought, what better way to use all of that produce than to toss it into a really yummy soup like the one I'm going to show you today. Now if you're looking for some fridge organization inspiration, I happen to have a couple of great videos here on the channel that will really help you get your fridge sorted in no time. Lots of easy tips, tricks, and shortcuts for doing it. I'll link those videos in the description box below. Now to get started, I have got my nice big Dutch oven. I'm gonna get that heating up over medium-high heat. And I just want to add a little bit of oil to the bottom of my pot. You don't need to too much, but we're just going to be sauteing some veggies here. Now as soon as my oil is nice and hot, I'm going to go ahead and get some veggies in here. So I have got some onion, some celery, as well as some carrot that I just peeled. Classic ingredients in soup and also ingredients that I use for my holiday stuffing. So whatever I had left over, I just am going to toss into the pot. I also had a rather sad-looking bell pepper sort of hidden in the back of my fridge. You know when the skin gets a little bit wrinkly? So I decided to give that a quick chop and I'm going to get that in my pot as well. I love the smell of these ingredients in a pot. One of my favorite smells in the kitchen. So once our veggies have had a nice chance to soften up a little bit, it's time to add even more great flavor to this. And I'm going to be doing that with a whole heaping helping of minced garlic. You know when it comes to garlic, I really like to go for it in this kitchen. Never hold back. I'm also going to go ahead and add some Italian seasoning to this. So I'm aiming for a bit of a minestrone feel with this soup and the Italian seasoning goes a long way to achieving those flavors. Now in terms of the protein in this soup, you have tons of great options. If you've got any leftover chicken or turkey or even some beef from the holidays, you can definitely throw those in the pot. I'm going to go ahead and keep things really simple though with just some canned chickpeas that have been rinsed and drained. I always have chickpeas on hand in my pantry and they're a great source of both fiber and protein, which is why I love them so much. Next for the liquids in this recipe, I'm going to be using some fire-roasted tomatoes. I love the really subtle smoky flavor that fire-roasted tomatoes have, but if you don't have fire-roasted tomatoes on hand, you could also use plain diced tomatoes in this recipe. Those would work as well. Then I'm going to add my broth to the pot. So you could use vegetable broth or beef broth here. I'm actually using a chicken bone broth because it's loaded with protein and collagen, which are two things of course we could all be getting more of. Once I've got all of that yumminess in the pot, I like to add just one more super secret but super delicious ingredient, and that is a Parmesan rind. This is basically the skin that's left over after you're done grating a nice big hunk of Parmesan cheese. What I like to do is store the rind in the fridge until I'm making either a pasta sauce or a soup like this, and then I just pop the rind right into the pot and let it simmer away with my soup. In doing so, that amazing umami flavor of the Parmesan transfers into the soup and you get a really savory taste that is absolutely irresistible. I should mention this step is optional. You don't have to use a Parmesan rind, but if you have one in your refrigerator and you're cleaning it out anyways, definitely pop it right into your pot. You will not regret it. At this point, we're just going to let this mixture come to a boil, and as soon as it's reached a boil, we can go ahead and pop a lid on our pot, reduce the heat to medium low, and let it simmer away for maybe 20 to 30 minutes. You just want to give it a chance for all of those wonderful flavors to really come together. Once it's finished simmering, you can go ahead and discard that Parmesan rind because you won't need it anymore. All of its amazing flavor has been infused into our soup, and then we're going to add our finishing ingredients. So I really wanted this soup to be as nutritious as possible, so I want to load in lots of yummy greens. This is some kale that I've just given a quick chop to. I'm just going to stir it in and give it a minute to wilt in with all of that other yumminess. To this, I'm also going to be adding some peas. Now I'm just using some frozen peas, these have thawed out, and I'm going to add them straight to the pot. And I'm also going to hit this at this point liberally with some salt and some pepper. Always good to season your soup at the very end, just before enjoying. And this tastiness is ready to be enjoyed. I have to tell you guys, I absolutely adore the color and the texture of this soup, not to mention the fact that the flavor is out of this world. You can serve it up with some nice crusty bread if you want to, and I like topping it off with just another sprinkle of that Parmesan cheese. So much to love. Guys, I hope you will give this yummy recipe a try for yourselves, and if you do, be sure to tweet me, Instagram me, or Facebook me a photo, because you know how much I love seeing your kitchen creations. Remember, this recipe, like all of my recipes, is available on HealthyMealPlans.com, my amazing meal planning site. If you've never checked it out, the New Year is the perfect time to sign up. It's absolutely free to use, and basically what it allows you to do is browse more than a thousand recipes, drag and drop them into your weekly meal plan, and then automatically generates your shopping list for the week, so you can take it straight to the supermarket. So simple to use, and will make your life so much easier. I hope you'll give it a try for yourselves. And finally, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe, because there is lots more deliciousness where this came from.