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Vegetarian soup is a liquid food that is made by boiling vegetables in water and then seasoning and occasionally thickening the liquid that is produced. It is usually served as the first course of a dinner, but it is also often served as a light meal, such as lunch, on its own.

Soup is an easily made, economical and when properly prepared from fresh, nutritious vegetables, very wholesome food.

Care should be taken to produce this food attractive enough to appeal to the appetite, so it ought not to be greasy nor bland in flavour, neither should it be served in large quantities nor without the proper accompaniment.

A small quantity of well-seasoned, attractively presented vegetarian soup cannot fail to find approval when it is served as the first course of a meal. The point of this piece is to acquaint you with the details of cooking appetizing and nutritious vegetarian soup that is both wholesome and healthy.

The three main types of soup that can be cooked from wholly vegetarian (but not necessarily vegan) ingredients are: broths, cream soups (contains dairy produce) and purees. The basis of these three kinds can be a vegetable stock prepared from either dried or fresh vegetables or both.

BROTHS have for their base a clear vegetarian stock. They are sometimes a thin soup, yet other times they are prepared fairly thick with vegetables, rice or barley when they are served as a large part of a meal.

CREAM SOUPS are highly nutritious and there are lots of varieties. They have for their foundation a thin cream sauce, and to this are always added vegetables or grains.

PUREES are soups made thick partly or completely by the addition of some foodstuff obtained from boiling an piece of food and then straining it to form a pulp.

If vegetables containing starch such as beans, peas, lentils or potatoes are used for this soup, it is unnecessary to thicken the soup with any additional starch, yet if watery vegetables are used, other thickening is required. To be right, a puree should be nearly as smooth as double cream and of the same consistency.

When preparing vegetarian soup always use soft water but be careful to proportion the amount of water to that of the vegetables. Somewhat less than two pints of water to a pound of vegetables is a good rule for ordinary soups. Rich soups, meant for company, might have a smaller amount of water.

Here is a puree type recipe for carrot soup:

CARROT SOUP

4 good-sized carrots, 1 small head of celery, 1 fair-sized onion, 1 turnip, 3 oz. of breadcrumbs, 1-1/2 oz. of butter or margarine, 1 blade of mace, pepper and salt to taste.

Scrape and clean the vegetables; cut them up small; place them in a pan with 3 pints of water, the butter or margarine, breadcrumbs, and mace. Boil until the vegetables are quite tender; rub everything through a sieve and return the mixture to the saucepan.

Reheat; season with salt and pepper. If it is too thick add water. The soup ought to be as thick as cream; boil and serve with crusty bread.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a variety of topics, but is now involved with how to cook for diabetics. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Cookbooks For Diabetics.

The household budget represents a substantial part of most families’ expenditure but of that the largest part of the bill is for food. Meat almost certainly types the largest part of that food bill as well, so you would be forgiven for thinking that you could save a great deal of money by giving up meat. So, you would think that becoming a vegetarian would save you some money.

However, that is not always true. You can save money by taking up vegetarianism on a budget, yet it does not necessarily work out that in that manner without some effort on behalf of the vegetarian. The fact is that vegetables, on their own, often seem boring to someone who used to get pleasure from a good steak or barbecued spare ribs, so food manufacturers have come up with all manner of accoutrements to liven up vegetarian dishes yet these are not usually all that cheap.

Even some of the fairly regular vegetarian staple foodstuffs like nuts are not necessarily cheap, particularly if you want variety. After all, you can not just eat salted peanuts, not that all that salt would be good for you anyway but when you begin to buy macademia nuts or pistachio nuts for a change, you will find them dearer than meat.

Eating out at vegetarian restaurants is also relatively costly, because the market is relatively small. There are not many restaurants that refuse to cook meat but the percentage of the population that is vegetarian is still pretty small. This all leads to higher charges, and that is if you can find a vegetarian restaurant outside a large city. A sandwich bar is about the closest you will get to it in most towns yet there will become meat on the premises too.

The cost of vegetarian food is made worse if you insist on eating organically grown food. Eating only organically grown food can add 30% to your food bill making vegetarianism on a budget impossible. So what can you do to trim down the price of your food bill if you are a vegetarian?

The first thing to do is make a decision if you really believe the whole organic story. Some do, some do not. Either fashion, you could attempt growing the costly vegetables in your garden, your greenhouse or in an allotment. If you can not do that, you could offer to purchase these vegetables from friends, if they will grow them for you. Numerous pensioners take up gardening but numerous pensioners would get glad of the extra income.

Another way is to shop at farms or farmers’ markets. I know that time is valuable, but if you can just go to such a shop once a week, you could purchase enough food for three or four days without it deteriorating. Purchasing in bulk like that ought to be cheaper too. A sack of potatoes will last a month and it is far cheaper than purchasing a few pounds at a time from the supermarket.

Another method of reducing costs is not to purchase your fresh fruit and vegetables from supermarkets at all, because it easy to be enticed to buy the latest fad fruit or vegetable from halfway around the world at an exaggerated cost ‘just for a change’. Stick to locally grown fruit and vegetables that are in season and you might just about manage vegetarianism on a budget.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on many topics, but is at present concerned with French dip sandwich recipes. If you want to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our site at Vegetarian Sandwich Recipes.