A good soup can be an excellent way to comfort food or even a start to a meal. It’s a versatile option that leaves the room for plenty of changes and improvements. Whether you choose to go simple with just veggies, or take on a more complex approach, the right soup can be both comforting and filling.
Here are some ideas and inspiration that will set the mood for the next time you have to cook some soup.
14 Soup Recipes For Your Comfort And Hearty Meals
1. Easy Italian Sausage Orzo Soup
Now here’s a hearty way to enjoy a soup. The creamy tomato broth makes it look inviting and delicious. It helps that the soup recipe uses normal, everyday ingredients, making this easy and accessible.
If you intend to store the soup for long, it might be a good idea to cook the orzo separately and add it when needed. Otherwise, the orzo can absorb water from the soup over a long period of time, making it thicker than it needs to be. However, if you want to enjoy the soup right after you cook it, the best way forward is to cook the orzo in the soup.
2. Minestrone Soup
Vibrant hues of this soup are a great way to win hearts and taste buds. It’s made with simple ingredients, where herbs and veggies take the lead, and pasta adds an extra oomph.
Diced tomatoes bring out the colors here, while also providing the bulk of the broth, while working with some vegetable broth for depth of flavors. The basic recipe is gluten-free, oil-free, and fat-free, making it popular with several diet preferences.
3. Chinese Yam Sweet Corn Pork Ribs Soup
This classic Chinese soup recipe is rich in nutrients and nourishment. And it’s pretty much a hearty meal unto itself. The recipe involves pork ribs, cuttlefish, Chinese yams, sweet corn, and red dates as the primary ingredients. Cook it to perfection and enjoy this wonderful recipe.
Apart from its taste, in Chinese cuisine, this soup is also considered nourishing and good for health. It is said to help digestion and relieve fatigue, apart from offering a few other, similar health benefits. I think it might be somewhat analogous to how we view chicken soup over in the west.
4. Turkey Coconut Curry Soup
That is one photogenic soup! Of course, that means you’ll have to put in some effort for the garnish to get the right visual look. On the other hand, the recipe ensures a healthy and hearty meal that you can love.
The soup is often considered as a favorite pick for the change in seasons, as summer goes to fall. The recommended side serving is rice noodles, which go especially well with this lovely broth. Rich in flavor and full of goodness, this soup takes some effort to cook, but makes great use of its list of ingredients.
5. Simple Lasagna Soup
This interesting recipe has everything that would conventionally go into a lasagna. Except it is a soup! The little variations on the classic recipe make it a lovely choice for a comforting and delicious meal.
Principal ingredients of this soup include ground beef, Italian sausage, and crushed tomatoes that bring a deep flavor and this vibrant color to the recipe. It also makes great use of aromatics and herbs for a more delicious soup that’s pleasing to all the senses.
Some lasagna noodles also find their way into this soup, helping with the texture and overall flavor of the recipe.
6. This Meatball Soup
Juicy meatballs in a beef and chicken broth. Need I say more? This recipe is absolutely hearty and delicious. Caramelized onions, peppers, herbs, and spices make this a delight.
A big part of the recipe is bringing together the meatballs, gravy, and pasta in such a way that there is a pleasing shift for texture, taste, and flavors. In many cases, that’s easier said than done, but it’s things like these that differentiate skilled cooks from the unskilled.
The combination of chicken and beef broth blended in tomatoes, herbs, and spices, makes the broth/gravy very special. It is aromatic and flavorful.
7. Ham And Lentil Soup
Smoke ham hough or ham bone goes on the top of perfectly cooked lentils to make this classy and classic soup. Red lentils and yellow split peas provide the base for the lentil soup, while ham and onions contribute to the stock.
Once ready, the meal is nourishing and delicious. With a little bit of serving skill, it even gets amazing looks, pleasing the visual senses as much as it intends to please the taste buds.
Getting the stock ready will take some time. That’s about an hour if you have a pressure cooker, or twice that if you’re using a hob. This helps soften the lentils and ham, making them fit for use in the recipe.
8. A Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup
Can a discussion about soup be complete without the presence of chicken noodle soup? Well, we know the answer is no! This hearty and delicious soup leads the way as a beloved food, and perhaps even unlocks nostalgia for many people.
One of the highlights of the chicken noodle soup is just how incredibly versatile it is. Want to add more veggies? Go right ahead and take your pick. Want some meat in there? Yup, that will work just as well.
This particular recipe uses parmesan cheese with the broth, making it thicker and more flavorful, while also ensuring good flavoring of all other ingredients in the soup.
9. Hairy Gourd Pork Rib Soup
This brilliant soup is a medley of classic ingredients in one healthy and nourishing dish. Pork rib and peeled and cut hairy gourd are the chief ingredients, while the others add more flavor and texture. For those still wondering about the ingredients, hairy gourd is better known as fuzzy melon. And let’s face it, the latter is a much better name!
Fuzzy melon feels warm and tasty, something we would want in our recipe. On the other hand, hairy gourd is probably better suited as the name for a creepy dude whom you don’t want to see.
Nevertheless, the weird nomenclatures aside, the vegetable itself is quite nutritious and beneficial to be included in your diet.
10. Lemony White Bean Soup With Turkey and Greens
This recipe shows a rich soup with plenty of nourishing and healthy ingredients. Turkey, white beans, and veggies come together for a delicious combination, which makes this soup truly formidable and enjoyable.
Since the recipe includes white beans, make sure you give it enough time to soak in water and then for cooking. This not only helps the texture and softness of the beans, but also ensures removal of anti-nutrients in the beans, making them the nourishing, delicious food that we know them as.
11. This Sheet Pan Soup
This classic sheet pan soup could be (and should be) a work of art. It shows the true joy of simple ingredients coming together to create a delicious and hearty meal that everyone on the table can love. It takes some effort and time to prep and cook this, but it’s all well worth the effort.
After prep, you’ll need about 30 minutes in the oven for roasting ingredients like potatoes, carrots, onions, and garlic. The mix is accompanied with olive oil, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes to get the flavors and texture right. Once you’re done, the veggies should be fork ready.
Put them together with chicken stock and let a blender run until the mix has the desired consistency. Add the other ingredients to this puree and enjoy your soup hot!
12. Easy Cheeseburger Soup
Did someone suggest creativity in cooking? Well, here’s a cheeseburger for your soup. Honestly, I’m so impressed with the idea that it would be tough to measure up with it! Of course, high expectations must be tempered when trying such a recipe.
It’s texture is obviously going to be far removed from the classic cheeseburgers, but playing with the ingredients and styling should result in a pretty remarkable soup.
13. Ground Beef Cabbage Soup
This simple, one-pot recipe is wonderfully comforting and a lovely meal to enjoy. The rich tomato flavor shines through with vegetables like cabbages and more, while the beef provides an amazing taste and texture.
I am somewhat partial to one-pot recipes, mostly because it makes both prep and clean up easier. Rather than having to deal with a whole bunch of utensils, you can just manage the pot. It feels more organized and since it doesn’t require you to keep time aside for cleanup and similar tasks, it can be a good choice for weeknights as well.
14. The Classic Chicken Soup
The classic chicken soup made in a hearty style with a nice serving of chicken and a good mix of vegetables. In some ways, a good chicken soup is truly the comfort food many of us often crave, and it never fails to satisfy our hunger pangs.
The recipe does take some time, since it starts with a whole chicken, and involves shredding the chicken, while also discarding the skin and bones. There are a few steps to the recipe, so as to get the chicken and veggies going.
It’s also a very versatile recipe, with room for additives and flavoring to suit the western palate, or go the traditional route and prepare this in the classic Asian style.