How to make 3 Simple Soups in 60 minutes

Today I am going to share with you one of my favorite trios of soups.  I am addicted to soup.  I love it all year and find that it’s one of the best ways to get my kids to eat their veggies.

Our favorites – Turkey Chili, Lemon Chicken Orzo, Butternut Squash

Any one of these soups is likely to be found on our weekly menu, along with Tomato, Chicken Noodle, Minestrone, or Mexican Meatball.

I like to batch cook for my week whenever I can.  Roasting a chicken (or buying a pre-made one) can offer up dinner, soup, and a salad.  Dicing veggies all at once makes for a quick short cut and buying pre-cut and peeled butternut squash is also a huge time saver.

To start these three recipes, it’s important to lay out all your ingredients.  The meats for the Lemon Chicken and Chili, all the veggies and spices too.  I used a store roasted chicken this time.  While browning the ground turkey for the Chili, I shredded the chicken.  Instead of cutting onions three times for each of the soups, I diced them all at once.  While onions and meat are sautéing, slice and dice the zucchini and bell pepper for the Chili, the apples for the Butternut Squash Soup and the carrots and celery for the chicken soup.  Another time saver is am immersion blender stick.  Unless you are cooking a fancy dinner or catering, the immersion blender gets purees smooth enough.  A food mill is recommended in the Butternut Squash recipe, but for my family the immersion blender is just fine.  And who wants to clean and other product like a food processor or food mill? not me!  The stick goes right in the dishwasher. done.

The reason I chose these three soups are for their versatility.  My kids don’t really like chili, but when you use it to top chips and call it Nachos, suddenly it’s a hit.  The Chicken Orzo is a meal in one pot and the Butternut Squash is a favorite dipper for grilled cheese sandwiches.

All three of these soups are dairy-free and gluten-free (with GF orzo).  They are low in fat and high on nutrients. They each keep well.  The Chili and Butternut Squash freeze really well too.  The Chili recipe is entirely my own. Many thanks to the couple from Two Peas and their Pod for the Lemon Chicken Orzo recipe, our family has enjoyed it many times.  The Butternut Squash recipe is from The Barefoot Contessa, I’ve made it so many times, I think I know the recipe by heart.   What are your favorite soups?  How do you speed up your cooking for the week?  I’d love to hear your tips and tricks too!