Hey, everybody! I'm appalled. You're all )or most of you) are using pre-cooked or pre-packed ingredients. And as for "I can't have that any more because it's not milk-free or gluten-free" - the best tasting soup, and it really is no more trouble, is the one you make yourself ENTIRELY FROM SCRATCH.
Sharon, I know you've made up your mind, but add this to the file for next time.
For basic chicken stock - I save the chicken carcasses from a roast, put them in the freezer and to make stock, I put the carcass in a pot, add a bit of sale, cover it with water. Then toss in (if you have it) a carrot (don't bother peeling it), some onion (whatever heel of onion you have dying in the fridge), some parsley and/or celery (use the tops or the tough outer stems, this is literally a rubbish recipe).
To make it an Asian stock - leave out the other ingredients. Just use chicken and water, and a bit of salt. Then throw in a couple of star anise (whole) or five spice powder if you haven't got star anise. Three or four slices of ginger root.
With both - allow to simmer for 30-40 minutes. Taste to make sure you are happy with the flavour. Remove the carcass and other bits to a plate. I will even recycle the star anise - let it dry and it can be used a second time. I store the pre-loved star anise loose on top of the spice rack. Chuck out the bones, the ginger, the other herbs/vegetables. They are safe to eat, just have had the flavour cooked out of them. Pick any meat off the chicken bones if you have the patience - you get a surprising amount. At this point the stock (and meat) can be frozen for later use.
Soup recipes - also consider chicken risotto, it is a wonderful way to fill tummies in winter with a nourishing and tasty brew.
First - pumpkin soup. Simmer chunks of pumpkin in chicken stock until tender. Puree. I add a small amount of nutmeg to taste, sometimes a tiny bit of sugar, to give it a slightly sweeter taste (depends on the type of pumpkin you used). I sometimes add a swirl of sour cream to the soup. It can be eaten as is, or you can ladle it into a bowl, top it with a sliced baguette topped with grated cheese and toasted under the grill. Or you can use coconut cream (should be dairy free, and I admit I do use pre-made for this) and some fresh coriander leaf (aka cilantro).
Second - wonton soup. Also called (here) combination long and short soup. This is a good recipe for cleaning out the fridge and freezer. It sounds complicated but it's just a matter of gathering ingredients, and adapting to what you have.
The base is chicken stock. Have ready to throw in, in order of how long they will take to cook - ready-made wontons (I buy them from Chinatown). These are often pork but can be other meats. A handful of frozen prawns. Get a steak out of the freezer and slice it thinly while it is still fairly frozen. Do the same with some frozen pork if you have it. If you don't have either, it's okay. Peel a carrot and roll-cut it, or chunk-cut it. Other vegetables you can use - broccoli and cauliflower, cut into small florets. Lap cheong sausage, cut into thin slices, pan fried then thrown into the pot. You can use chorizo instead if you need to. I also put in some slices of Chinese barbecued pork. It's already cooked but it flavours the soup beautifully. Toss in (if you want to) a block of Chinese noodles - you can use anything, egg noodle or rice vermicelli. Last of all, a minute before serving, I throw in some or all of the following - sliced snow peas; sliced leek or spring onion; shredded leafy vegetables such as silverbeet, beetroot greens, bok choi or similar. There needs to still be a bit of crunch to the onion and snow peas.
If I'm feeling rushed or busy, I will use mixed frozen vegetables instead of a lot of this stuff. The thing is, depending on what you have available, the soup can be very different. But it always tastes marvellous and fills you up. it is a thin soup, with a lot of bits in it. Big bits.
And finally - a lesson for the next generation. Did you ever see Jim Henson's Storyteller series? It starred John Hurt as the storyteller. My kids loved it. He told the story of stone soup. One day while we were on holidays (and eating up our leftovers ready to head home a day or two later) I made stone soup in the apartment kitchen. I sent easy child 2/difficult child 2 out to the garden to find a smooth river rock. We washed the rock clean (it was the size of her fist, had a marble band in it) then put it in the pot and covered it with water. We then acted out the story. I asked for some salt - we had a salt shaker from the picnic set. If you're near the beach you can add a splash of sea water. We needed a bit more to it, nothing that could be considered as food, of course. We had the leftover bits of a barbecued chicken the kids had eaten the day before. That went into the pot. Some carrot peel. The fleshy but rubbery part of onion peel. The leafy bit at the top of some celery. Each bit, we added as we tasted and said, "Hmm, it needs just a little bit of something..." but of course, there was no real food in it. Just rubbish. That's the beauty of this recipe and this story, you can make a delicious soup out of virtually nothing. If you have old meat bones of any kind, the fatty bits or the gristle from some meat dish, maybe some leftover potato or pumpkin, or a spoonful of greens from dinner the night before - chuck it in.
Of course you don't eat the bones, or the carrot peel or the onion skin. You don't eat the stone, either. You fish all of that out. But you can eat the rest. I remember when I made this on holiday, the kids each had a small cupful of soup (which normally they wouldn't touch but the magic of the story hooked them in) and I used the rest to make a risotto for dinner that night. So we got two meals out of rubbish.
easy child 2/difficult child 2 carefully washed the rock and dried it. She brought it home and taught herself to make many different kinds of soup, all of them with the stone as the start. When she married and left home, she took her magic stone with her.
Marg