Homemade Alphabet Vegetable Soup

Name: Homemade Alphabet Vegetable Soup
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 30 min
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients: 1 tbsp olive oil; 2 cloves garlic minced; 3 carrots, diced; 1 medium-sized Russet potato; 1 cup green beans, chopped; 1 cup Corn; 1 can kidney beans; 1/2 cup dried green lentils, rinsed; 1 cup dried alphabet pasta; 5 cups vegetable broth; 2 14oz cans Mutti finely chopped tomatoes; 1 tsp salt; 1/2 tsp pepper; 1 tsp dried basil; 1 tsp dried thyme; 1/2 tsp dried oregano; 2 bay leaves

1/20/17

This Homemade Alphabet Vegetable Soup is a hearty, delicious spin on your favorite canned soup and is ready in just 30 minutes. It's also freezer-friendly for quick weeknight meals!

This post is sponsored by Mutti. Thanks so much for supporting the brands that help keep my blog up and running!

Say hello to your new favourite soup, and a twist on your favourite childhood canned soup.

When I was in university, my go-to for busy weekdays was alphabet vegetable soup. I volunteered Monday nights tutoring middle school kids because I had convinced myself back then that I wanted to become a schoolteacher (yeah, me and just about a billion other people – the school boards in the Toronto and Hamilton areas are just about impossible to get into!)

Anyway, after volunteering every Monday night, I would stop in at the local No Frills grocery store, which is, as its name would suggest, no frills.??

Cheap.

In other words, the perfect student budget store, and I regretably didn't have any cheaper grocery options in my neighbourhood so I would always do my weekly haul there and then take the streetcar home.

And I would eat a TV dinner at 9pm once I got home because I was so exhausted from the long day. Who else buys like $60 worth of groceries and then eats a frozen dinner after you're done shopping because you can't be bothered to actually cook all the food you just bought?

I'm not the only one who does that, right????

So anyways, I know you're probably wondering how in the hell this relates to vegetable soup.?

Basically, I would pick up a couple cans at this budget grocery store without fail every week. It was quick and easy, I figured I got in some extra veggies, and it was low in calories but filling all at the same time. And it helped that it was like, only 99 cents a can.

What I wish I could go back and tell my 20-year-old self, however, is that you can make homemade alphabet vegetable soup for cheap AND without added preservatives AT HOME – and have tons of freezable leftovers.

Makes 99 cents a can seem pretty expensive now, doesn't it?

I think I've hit the Homemade Alphabet Vegetable Soup thing right on the head, because this stuff is hearty, delicious, nutritious, slurpalicious…it hits all the right places in the dead of winter when you're craving something hot for dinner but you just don't have the time.

It's the kind of thing you pull out of the freezer right after you've finished grocery shopping and just can't be bothered to make anything else. It's that comforting bowl full of childhood memories, using pasta shapes from the baby food isle of the grocery store.

Oh yeah, we're talkin' goalssssssss.??????

So what else do you need to know about this Homemade Alphabet Vegetable Soup?

Besides being a homemade version of everyone's go-to canned soup, I've stuffed it full of protein so it also passes as an all-in-one meal as opposed to a side serving to a grilled cheese. There's a whole can on kidney beans in here and lots of lentils, so you also have a ton of fibre alongside all kinds of veg.

And you don't have to necessarily put in all the traditional vegetables you see here. This is also a great soup for getting rid of your soon-to-expire produce items. You could add in some chopped leafy greens like spinach or kale towards the end, or some zucchini, bell peppers…anything really.

Just keep in mind that the cook times on certain veggies will be less than the ones I have in here, so you may need to wait until 5 minutes before the soup is finishing simmering to mix in your add veg. Zucchini cooks really fast, for instance, and turns mushy after a long time. So keep that in mind!

I know it seems silly but I really prefer Mutti's finely chopped tomatoes for this recipe. They are kind of like a mix between regular chopped tomatoes and crushed tomatoes – you have the perfect little bit of chunky-ness that you need for a hearty soup like this, but there's also just the right amount of blended tomatoes that give this soup a vibrant, savoury flavour. I highly recommend buying them for your next soup and honestly, not even just because this post is sponsored.

Just look at this soup and tell me you wouldn't devour a whole bowl in 30 seconds. Okay, maybe take your time. I wouldn't want you to burn your tongue.?

And I should also mention that the lentils and alphabet pasta soak up a lot of the broth when cooking, so when you go to reheat this Homemade Alphabet Vegetable Soup, you should add a little bit of water (just like you would do with the canned stuff!) and a tiny bit of salt (if you want) to ensure the consistency of the soup remains the same. Other than that it freezes/refridgerates well and is as amazing leftover as it is fresh.

So this Homemade Alphabet Vegetable Soup is going to have to be something you keep in your arsenault of recipes for busy weeks. If you're anything like me, you're gonna need it!

Will you be making this Homemade Alphabet Vegetable Soup? If you try any of my recipes be sure to let me and Mutti know on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or in the comments – we’d love to see what you cook up!

And if you're looking for more inspiration, check out these Zucchini Lasagna Roll-Ups. Ummm, my fave ever!!!

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5 from 2 votes