How to Make Easy Summer Vegetable Soup: Nourishing and Delicious

This easy summer veg soup is a lovely way to use up your garden bounty—or make the most of fresh, seasonal produce from the farmer’s market. It’s a perfect starter recipe if you’re trying to get your kids into eating soups: it’s blended into a creamy smoothness with no floating ‘bits’—a common dealbreaker for little ones. My own kids aren’t keen on carrots, but they happily eat them in this soup because they can’t see them! It’s quick to prepare (no need to dice—just chop the veggies into chunks), easy on the budget, and it freezes beautifully. Inspired by potage bonne femme—a French-style vegetable soup I first made years ago—I hope you give this summery version a try.

Pin

Why This Easy Summer Veg Soup Is Good for You

The vegetables in this soup are full of easy-to-assimilate minerals, and the base is nourishing bone broth, rich in gelatin and naturally soothing to the gut. It’s a gentle, healing option—especially helpful for anyone recovering from a cold, stomach upset, or just in need of something comforting and restorative.

How to Make Vegetable Soup Taste Amazing

Start with good-tasting vegetables—this makes all the difference. And be sure to sauté your onions (or leeks or celery, if you’re using those instead) before adding the rest of the ingredients. A gentle sauté helps develop flavor right from the beginning. Salt your soup little by little as it cooks; a bland soup is often just one that hasn’t been seasoned properly. I recommend using an unrefined salt like Celtic sea salt for its fuller flavor compared to regular table salt.

I’ve kept the seasoning simple in this version—just salt and pepper—because that’s how my kids prefer it. But if you enjoy herbs, thyme, parsley, or a bay leaf would all work beautifully here. Just remember to remove any thyme sprigs or bay leaves before blending. If you’re using fresh parsley, stir it in right at the end to preserve its bright flavor.

The stock (or bone broth) you use is just as important. The more flavorful it is, the better your soup will taste. For a rich, homemade chicken stock, add a whole raw chicken, raw chicken bones, or leftover roast chicken bones to a large stockpot. Toss in a quartered onion, a carrot, a few celery stalks, and a bay leaf. Add just enough water to cover, bring it to a boil, and skim off any foam that rises. Then simmer gently for 4–6 hours. Strain and store in jars—your broth will keep in the fridge for up to a week and adds depth to all sorts of soups, stews, and sauces.

Best Vegetables for Soup

This soup uses onions for its flavor base, plus carrots, potatoes, and zucchini. If you have leeks, slice them and use instead of the onions if you like. Or use mirepois as a base for this soup which is 2 part onions to 1 part carrots and 1 part celery (in this recipe it would mean using 1 cup onions, 1/2 cup carrots and 1/2 cup celery).

Carrots add color and a hint of sweetness to this recipe. Potatoes make it filling and help the texture of the blended soup be more creamy. Zucchini add minerals and a green hue which balances the orange color of the carrots. However, you could use sweet potatoes instead of carrots and replace some of the zucchini with spinach, kale, or even green beans. Also, if you have small amounts of other veggies that need to be used up, add them in too.

A blended soup is also great for using up sad looking vegetables or leftover cooked veg from last night’s dinner.

The 5 Basic Principles of Preparing Soup

1. This is probably an obvious one, but the better tasting veggies you use, the more flavorful your soup will be. The stock also adds a lot of depth of flavor to the soup, so use a good homemade stock if possible.
2. Season gradually. Add 1 teaspoon salt when sauteing the onions. Then sprinkle in some more when you add the rest of the veggies. Once the soup is blended, taste it and add a little more salt if necessary. For this soup you will need about 2 teaspoons of salt total.
3. Build flavor by sauteing the onions in butter. THEN add the rest of the veggies. I sometimes even chop the carrots small and saute them together with the onions.
4. Control texture. When making unblended soup add longer cooking veggies first and quicker cooking veggies later on. Only cook them until tender. Overcooked and mushy vegetables are not appetizing. This soup will be blended at the end, so you don’t need to worry about that. However, still only cook until the veggies are tender and blend the soup until completely smooth.
5. Simmer your soup on gentle heat – don’t boil! You can bring it to boil first to make the process quicker, but then reduce the heat immediately and let it simmer till cooked. Boiling can have a negative impact on the flavor of your vegetables.

Tips for Making This Easy Summer Veg Soup

• This soup is very easy to double or triple because it contains equal parts of all the vegetables.
• The amounts are a guide and soups are generally very forgiving. If you have an extra potato that really needs to be used up, put it in. Or if you love zucchini but not so much the carrots, add more of the former and less of the latter. Or add sweet potatoes instead of carrots.
• Fresh vegetables are always best, but use frozen if you need to! I often use frozen celery in soups because I cannot often find it at the market and frozen is my backup for those times.
• Because the vegetables will be blended, there is no need to finely chop them. It’s enough if you cut them into medium chunks.
• The base of the soup is onions for flavor. If you like, replace the onions with sliced leeks. You could also use 1 cup onions and 1 cup sliced celery.
• For more of a French style soup, add some fresh thyme sprigs or some Herbes de Provence. Be sure to remove the thyme sprigs before blending the soup.
• I use chicken stock because it’s the mildest tasting of commonly used stocks. If you like, use beef or lamb stock instead and remove the fat from the top of the stock first if you are worried that your soup will taste ‘beef-y’.
• Crème fraiche is my favorite addition to blended soups because of its creamy, slightly tangy flavor. If you don’t have it, you could use sour cream (first remove the pot of soup from the heat and stir it in slowly to prevent curdling) or skip it altogether. The soup will still taste delicious.

Ingredients

Pin

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 cups chopped onion (or 1 large onion)
• 2 cups chopped carrots (4 medium carrots)
• 2 cups peeled and chopped potatoes (3 medium potatoes)
• 2 cups zucchini (3 medium zucchnini)
• 4 cups chicken stock
• 1/4 cup crème fraiche
• unrefined salt, freshly ground black pepper

Because the soup will be blended, there is no need to spend time finely dicing the veggies. Just cut them into medium chunks, like I did in the photo above.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Storage, Freezing, & Reheating

• This soup will keep in the fridge for up to 5 days.
• To reheat it, warm it up slowly on the hob, stirring from time to time – don’t heat it up super fast or the bottom of the soup may burn.
• This soup is fine to freeze. Try to use it up within 3 months to prevent nutrient loss.

Slow Cooker Instructions For This Easy Summer Veg Soup

1. Prep the veggies and saute the onions as usual.
2. Add the onions to the crockpot, then layer in the carrots, potatoes, and zucchini (in this order).
3. Season well with salt and pepper.
4. Pour in enough stock just to barely cover the veggies.
5. Cook on low for about 6 hours or on high for about 3 hours.
6. Check to make sure the carrots are tender, adjust the seasoning and blend straight in the crockpot.
7. Stir the crème fraiche into the soup or drizzle it over individual bowls of soup.
8. Serve hot or warm.

Note: If you are using herbs in this recipe, add dried herbs to the crockpot at the start of cooking and fresh herbs about 30 minutes before you finish cooking the soup to help preserve their flavor.

I hope you enjoy making this simple, nourishing soup! I always seem to have more zucchini than I know what to do with in the summer, and this recipe is one of my favorite ways to put them to good use. If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments below or send me an email—I’m always happy to help.

And if you enjoy making soups, please check out my other soup recipes:

Nourishing Broccoli Soup with Crème Fraîche

Homemade Tuna Chowder with Bone Broth and Veggies

Hearty Green Lentil and Broad Bean Soup

Italian Pasta Fagioli Soup