Forget expensive carton soups, they usually have too much salt (or charge you extra for leaving it out) and skimp the ingredients that really matter.

Here's a version of classic Carrot and Coriander Soup that will locate inferior ready made versions and nuke them from orbit with extreme prejudice. Note the green colour, use a generous handful of coriander, don't mess about with tiny quantities, its a proper ingredient in this soup not an optional herb.

I'm assuming you have a soup maker, if not just boil everything up and at the end whiz it up with a blender (wait until it's cooled a bit or you may need to redecorate afterwards) or even mash it up by hand and call it chunky soup.

Ingredients

• 3 or 4 big carrots (they usually taste stronger than small ones)
• 1 onion
• 1 medium potato
• A big handful of coriander
• 2 cloves of garlic
• Generous dash of soy sauce
• Ginger powder, say about a heaped teaspoon (optional)
• Dried Parsley (optional)
• Black pepper
• Chilli sauce (optional)

Modus Operandi

Wash everything that isn't peeled or from a jar and cut any nasty bits off. I won't keep repeating this.

Wash the carrots, top and tail and chop into chunks. Don't peel, that's where most of the flavour is. Chuck in the soup maker.

Chunk the spud with its peel on. Peel the onion and garlic, chop them up and all into the machine.

Chop the coriander into short bits. Don't leave long stems, they will wind round the chopper in the soup maker and burn out your motor (don't ask...) You can use all the coriander that hasn't gone yellow or slimy, even the stems.

Your aiming to fill the soup maker up to the top line, but if it goes a bit higher,squash everything down.

Add a dash or two of soy sauce, it adds the same savoury as pure salt with much less total salt and more taste.

Add the ginger powder, if you've got any, and some dried parsley. Ditto with chilli sauce, only you can judge how much, I like my soup to be hot so happily put in a tablespoon of Encona or Ghost Chilli Sauce, but if you don't just use a few drops of Tabasco.

Add some ground black pepper, unless you are a professional chef when you'll add it at the end.

Top up to the line with boiling water and set it off on the 'smooth soup' setting.

How to Eat

Seriously? You don't know how to eat soup?

Serve in a bowl with a spoon. Nice with real bread or wholemeal bread with lots of olive spread. More calories in the breads and spread than the soup, so great for dieting but very filling.

Put a sprig (love that word!) of coriander on top if you want to impress someone or you plan to share a pic on Insta or Tik Tok. Food is for eating not watching but you might as well do something with it while it cools.

If there's two of you you get a bowl each, for one of you half of it should fill one of those clip-top soup mugs and freeze or keep in the fridge for a few days.

By The Way

The soup is vegan and gluten free, whether or not the bread and spread is depends on what you choose.

Carrots, coriander and parsley are all umbelliferous plants, related to parsnips. The strong smelling oily compounds that make them taste so distinctive are meant to put off (or even harm) insect pests, but obviously carrot flies haven't leaned how to access Wikipedia yet.