Top 8: The cream of the shop-bought vegetable soups

"Creamy soup is a good base for leftovers — the end of a can of baked beans or chickpeas, scraps of meat, a raggy rasher or parmesan bits that are too small to grate..."

Picture: iStock 

Many of the soups we have tasted in the past have been over-salted and under-flavoured so we watched for these two elements when tasting this week’s vegetable soups. Of course, making our own is easy, especially with the great seasonal root vegetables available now.

You can reduce cooking time by grating your favourite blend of vegetables — raw carrots, parsnips, celeriac, potatoes, etc — onions and sliced leeks. Boil up a vegetable stock cube with a litre or two of water and plunge the grated vegetables in, adding your top flavourings.