Granny Soup

Debbie asked for this recipe, and I thought it was blog-able. Hope you like it (and I hope I don't get into trouble from Mum!).

Granny makes a few soups, but my favourite is definitely the chunky one with lamb shanks. I especially love stealing the bones out of the pot and eating the meat off them. Mmm.

When I try to make this particular Granny soup, a few ingredients are essential (in bold below), the rest is just what needs using up from the fridge/pantry. One problem is that by the time you have put in a little bit of all the veggies you’d like, you find that you have accidentally made enough for about 20 people. Use a BIG pot: I learned the hard way. Divide it up and freeze it if you don’t happen to have 20 people handy.

Ingredients:

• About half a packet of dried bean/pea/barley/lentil soup mix.
• 1 or 2 lamb shanks
• Roughly chopped up assorted veggies (e.g. Onion, Potato, Sweet Potato, Pumpkin, Turnip, Parsnip, Carrot, Cauliflower, Zucchini, Celery (leaves and all), leftover stuff such as canned corn/frozen peas etc.).
• The secret ingredient (Mum wouldn’t tell me, but I managed to guess it) is a sachet of French Onion Soup mix. Any brand will do, I often use home brand.

This recipe also works well with a ham bone, but I like lamb shanks the best. You could also use a leftover chicken carcass. I LOVE to serve it with that strange herby salt that Mum and Dad use (A.Vogel Herbamare®)

The basic method I follow is to boil the bone and pulses up together first. Sometimes the bone I drop into the hot water is still frozen. I then chop everything else up and add it in a roughly logical order (items that take longer to cook go in first) and then I add the French onion soup mix last. Let it boil a bit till it is all cooked.

Once finished, you will need to look after it: either boil it up for 10 mins once a day (you can even add to it as you do this) or keep it in the fridge/freezer. It doesn’t last much more than 24 hours at room temperature (Granny says this is because of the pulses) and it is HORRIBLE when it ‘turns’. These days I’m in the habit of dividing and freezing the same day (keeping some in the fridge too of course) because I got sick of feeding my beautiful soup to the compost heap.

It is a great meal soup and really homey.  In our house, Bethany and I could just about live off it, but the others are not so partial (too many vegetables?).