Vegetable Noodle Soup

There are days when only soup will do. Not a salad, not a sandwich — a proper bowl of hot soup, steam rising, noodles tangled through a broth full of vegetables. This vegetable noodle soup is the one I make on those days. It is the simplest comfort food I know, and it comes together in half an hour from things I almost always have in the fridge.

This is my vegetable noodle soup, and there is nothing fancy about it. A light broth, plenty of vegetables, soft noodles and a handful of herbs — that is the whole recipe. It is the soup I make when someone in the house is feeling under the weather, and the soup I make when I have a fridge full of vegetables and no plan. It never disappoints.

Watch: Vegetable Noodle Soup

Prep time: 10 minutes | Cook time: 20 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 150g noodles (egg noodles, ramen or spaghetti)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 onion, finely diced
• 2 carrots, sliced into rounds
• 2 stalks celery, sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1.2 litres vegetable stock
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 100g green beans, cut into short pieces
• 100g sweetcorn (fresh or frozen)
• A big handful of fresh parsley or coriander, chopped

Method

1. Start by getting everything ready. Peel and slice the carrots and celery, dice the onion, and cut the green beans. Soup is a fast recipe once it starts cooking, so having everything chopped and beside the pot makes it calm instead of frantic.
2. Heat the olive oil in a large pot over a medium heat, and add the onion, carrots and celery. Cook for five minutes, stirring now and then, until the onion softens and the vegetables start to smell sweet.
3. Add the garlic and cook for one more minute — just until it smells fragrant. Do not let it brown, or it will turn bitter and the soup will taste it.
4. Pour in the vegetable stock and the soy sauce, and bring the pot to a gentle boil. The soy sauce is the secret to this soup — it gives the broth a depth that plain stock on its own never quite manages.
5. When the broth is boiling, add the noodles and stir them loose with a fork. Cook for three minutes less than the packet says, because the noodles keep cooking in the hot broth after the pot comes off the heat.
6. Add the green beans and the sweetcorn, and cook for another three or four minutes, until the beans are bright and just tender and the noodles are soft. Taste the broth and add a little more soy sauce or a pinch of salt if it needs it.
7. Take the pot off the heat and stir in most of the chopped herbs. The residual heat wilts them gently, and the smell that comes up off the pot is wonderful.
8. Ladle the soup into warm bowls, making sure everyone gets a good share of noodles and vegetables, and scatter the rest of the herbs over the top. Serve straight away, with a spoon and, if you like, a slice of bread for mopping up the broth.

Serving and Storage

Serve this soup the moment it is ready, in warm bowls, while the noodles are still soft and the broth is hot — the noodles drink up the broth as they sit, so a soup that waits too long turns into a stew. Leftovers keep in the fridge for two days, and it reheats gently with a splash of stock or water stirred in. If you know you will have leftovers, cook the noodles separately and add them to each bowl — that way they stay springy.

Tips

A few things that make this soup better. Use any vegetables you have — a handful of peas, a courgette, a few mushrooms, whatever is in the fridge. The soup is forgiving, and it is a wonderful way to use up vegetables before they go soft. And do not overcook the noodles; they should be just tender, not mushy, and a little under is better than a little over, because they keep cooking in the bowl.

That is vegetable noodle soup: ten minutes of chopping, twenty minutes of cooking, and a bowl of something warm and kind at the end of it. Make it on a cold evening, when you want dinner without a fuss, and see if it becomes your cold-weather regular too. It is easy to make your own as well — a handful of peas or a few mushrooms stirred in with the beans makes it go further, and a squeeze of lemon at the end brightens the whole pot. Some nights I add a soft-boiled egg to each bowl, which makes it a proper meal on its own, and when I have leftover chicken in the fridge, a handful of shredded meat turns it into a heartier dinner. The method stays the same, and the pot stays warm and kind. If you try it, tell us on our Contact page — we love hearing what home cooks do with the recipes here.