Versatile Vegetable Soup Base

I love soups and I used to think only meat can offer the best flavour for making soups. Well, I was in for a surprise!

With the use of a variety of vegetables we CAN make tasty and flavourful, not withstanding extremely nutritious soups too!

Here's a soup base recipe that I've used for quite a number of my meatless meals. The kids and hubby love it and so do I. What's more, the colours of the ingredients have already won me over, I simply love colourful food!

Vegetable Soup Base (A)

Ingredients required - 1 large Carrot cut into chunks, 3 stalks of Celery cut into 3 parts each, 5 Shitake Dried Mushrooms (there's no need to rehydrate them beforehand), 1 Sweet Corn, 1 large Onion cut into half, 5 cloves of Garlic. Boil all the ingredients in a pot of water sufficient to cover all the ingredients. Once water start boiling simmer for an hour, add salt to taste. Discard all ingredients after sieving the soup into a separate pot.

Vegetable Soup Base (B)

Ingredients required - 1 large Carrot cut into chunks, 2 stalks of Celery cut into 3 parts each, 5 Shitake Dried Mushrooms (likewise not required to rehydrate them), 1 Sweet Corn, 1 large Onion cut into half, 3 medium size Potatoes cut into chunks, 3 medium size Tomatoes cut into wedges. Boil all the ingredients in a pot of water sufficient to cover all the ingredients. Once water start boiling simmer for an hour, add salt to taste. Discard all ingredients after sieving the soup into a separate pot.

With this soup base I've made the following as meals

What I did with this soup meal was I boiled the chickpeas separately for about an hour till it was tender. I boiled all the rest of the ingredients in the soup base I made till they are cooked through, except for the Chickpeas and Kailan (green leafy vegetable), I added those just a minute before the heat was turned out.

This meatless Miso Soba Noodle meal was easy peasy. I boiled the soba till it's cooked in just plain boiling water. I cooked the tofu, mushrooms and green vegetables (in this case was Kailan) in the ready soup base. I added miso after all the cooking was done. Assemble the ingredients together and top the noodles with chopped spring onions, sesame seeds and Japanese hot pepper powder. 

This was even easier, other than the Chickpeas being boiled separately, the rest of the ingredients were taken out from the soup base.

The soup base can also be used for other meals/dishes that requires soup stock. Try it some time! Let's journey through a healthy eating lifestyle!