Soup-er Recipes to Warm You Through

After a cold, rainy autumn day, there is nothing more warming or happiness-inducing than turning the heating up, putting cosy fresh pyjamas on and curling up with a steaming bowl of comforting soup. The only thing that can make the dining experience even more satisfying is if you’ve made it yourself.

If it’s dark when you leave the house in the morning and dark when you get home, this time of year can be pretty draining and you don’t always want to spend a long time preparing a meal when you get home. But with a soup maker or a Cook4Me, you can have a delicious meal waiting for you with minimal effort, and your house will be filled with a mouth-watering smell.

Try these cockle-warming soup recipes this autumn to keep away the chill:

Classic tomato soup has been a favourite for as long as anyone can remember, comforting us when we’re ill and perking us up when we come in shivering from the cold after a long day at work. You can just roast tomatoes on a baking tray with herbs and crushed garlic before blending with stock to make a really simple tomato soup.

But if you want a more distinctive canned soup flavour without the can, try out this clever recipe from the Two Chubby Cubs. It features a few unusual ingredients – baked beans and pickled onions?! – but it works beautifully to create a replica of that famous taste we all know and love.

Halloween is just a few weeks away; if you’re planning on buying a pumpkin to carve, don’t throw away the flesh after you’ve scooped it out. Instead, turn it into a gorgeous warming soup using this great recipe from The Purple Pumpkin Blog. It includes lots of other veggies besides pumpkin, which is ideal at this time of year to give your immune system a boost when there are more germs than usual flying around.

Making soup is a great way to get rid of leftovers and stop yourself needlessly wasting food. Roast dinner leftovers work particularly well in a soup; simply boil meat, veg and stock together before blending, adding a little cream or fat-free natural yoghurt if you want a creamier consistency.

You can turn just about any meal’s leftovers into a soup though. Got leftover chicken and veg from fajita night? Get the blender out and make soup! Leftover chilli con carne? Make soup! Leftover pie filling? Make soup! You get the idea…

Chocolate soup sounds very much like something we’d like to go swimming in, with our mouths wide open. Think of it like a bowl of extremely decadent hot chocolate, which sounds pretty amazing in itself. Soup Chick has a dreamy recipe for chocolate dessert soup. It’s incredibly rich, so maybe have a light salad beforehand so you’re not left feeling sick!

Although soup is lovely on its own, it’s even better when you’ve got something to dunk in it. Even the cheapest white bread tastes great dipped in soup, but if you’ve got the time, have a go at making something extra special to dunk in your dinner.

This recipe from Holly Cooks for sun-dried tomato cheese straws is heavenly with tomato soup, while Lucy Loves’ recipe for Irish soda bread with cheddar and bacon would be absolutely lovely dipped into pumpkin or any kind of vegetable soup. And if you don’t have the time, you can’t go wrong with classic toast soldiers.

Soup is the ideal meal to batch cook and freeze, and travel mugs and flasks mean you can take a portion of this warming goodness with you wherever you go. A flask full of soup makes a perfect hand warmer if you’ve forgotten your gloves too!