I love homemade soup. I make it with ingredients I have on hand and it always makes canned soup seem like seawater. Most commercial soups rely on salt to bump the flavour. I found I was out of soup so I started making a batch. This is what turned out.
I started by blanching some tomatoes in hot water for one minute and then rinsing them in cold water. Then, I cut the stem core out and chopped them in large chunks. I ended up with about 500 ml (2 cups) of chopped tomatoes.
I chopped up about 250 ml (1 cup) of onions, 1 clove of garlic and about 175 ml (3/4 cup) of trimmings from my homemade back bacon. You could use regular bacon I guess, if you must.
I microwaved some homemade fresh garlic sausage. If you haven’t made your own garlic sausage (poor devil), you can substitute polish or garlic sausage and you won’t have to precook it. Cut it in bite size slices. You want about 375 ml (1 1/2 cups) of sausage.
In a large pot over medium heat, melt 30 ml (2 tablespoons) of butter or margarine. When it starts to foam, throw in the onions and garlic and saute for 2 minutes.
I added the diced bacon and sauteed until the bacon started to colour the bottom of the pot, about 5 minutes.
I added the sausage and sauteed for 2 more minutes. You’ll note the pot starts to get brown stuff stuck to the bottom. That is just what you want!
At this point you need to add 3 liters (6 cups) chicken stock. Now, my chicken stock was homemade (whose isn’t) but it was in the freezer. I microwaved one container to get it liquid and threw the others in frozen. I added the tomatoes. You can use canned or packaged stock if you are underprivileged and don’t have homemade.
I increased the heat to high to bring it to a boil. While it was getting up to temperature, I chopped up 375 ml (1 1/2 cups) of green and yellow beans that I had grown (you do grow your own vegetables, don’t you?). You can use carrots, peas, broccoli, or whatever vegetables or you like.
When the soup came to the boil, I lowered the heat to low to simmer. I added the beans, 2 ml (1/2 teaspoon) each of dried thyme, rosemary and oregano. I also added 3 ml (3/4 teaspoon) of extra hot Cajun spice. You can use any spice blend you like, just add it a little at a time until you like the flavour.
I let it simmer for 45 minutes and then added 1/2 cup of orzo pasta and let it simmer 20 minutes more.
