Life-changing Soup Recipe!

When I first saw this soup recipe (linked below), I thought it would be fun to try, but I would not have imagined that it would become part of our normal cooking lineup. Not only is the soup good, but we have changed our everyday food prep process to drastically minimize food waste!

Instead of using the exact vegetables in the recipe, we freeze the leftovers of all of the vegetables we use throughout the week. So as we are chopping, we save the ends and outsides of onions, peels and tops of carrots, ends of celery, chard, etc. and put them directly in the freezer. We also freeze vegetables that we think are getting a little soft/might go bad soon, but we know we can’t eat or cook right away. At the end of 2-3 weeks we have used at least a couple of onions, and a variety of vegetables.

Once we have one or two bags full, we go ahead and start. The first step is roasting all of the vegetables in the oven to develop the flavor. We always add oil, but sometimes try to experiment with different spices and flavoring besides the miso/garlic/seaweed mix in the original recipe.

Then we use the instapot and throw everything in with water and a couple hours later, we put it through the strainer to get rid of the bits that didn’t dissolve, and it’s ready!

We use the stock for everything, from soup to drink to adding liquid to stir fries or stews. And now that we’ve developed the habit, it’s surprisingly easy and simple.

Note: One big reason this works for us is because we can’t use vegetable scraps for another purpose (e.g. compost, chickens, etc.). We live in a city with a good amount of space (I feel very lucky!) but not enough to deter rats and other hygienic related challenges. However, our city has a compost pickup, so if we use as much of the nutrients in the vegetables that we buy and then use the compost bin, I think it’s the best we can do for now!

Enjoy!