Our Family’s Favorite Soups for Autumn

If you have seen any of our midweek meal inspo posts, you’ll know that we all eat a variety of foods each and every week. As it’s fall time, we have been on a bit of a soup kick. There are so many delicious soups out there and they always feel so fun for autumn. With that in mind, we have tried so many different soups, and have a bunch of favorites that we want to share with you. These soups are kid friendly and great to make ahead and store in the freezer. Most of them could have pasta added too, if you’d like, though some of them are perfect without it.

Tortilla Soup

As a house that eats a lot of Mexican inspired food, tortilla soup is just a soup that’s always going to do well. It’s easy to make by dicing up two onions, celery and carrots, then frying them off in oil. When they are cooked down, you can add in grated garlic, a few cans of tomatoes and some cans of drained beans. From there, we add in chicken stock. Everything in this recipe was measured with our heart, if we are honest ,depending on what we like. I then added in some chicken breasts and let them cook in the soup for 30 minutes before shredding them. For the seasoning, I added in cumin, chili powder and oregano. For toppings, you can go with what you want, but we always have tortilla chips, avocado and cheddar cheese.

Spooky Chicken Noodle

This is a quick version of chicken noodle soup. You’ll want to cut up some leeks, celery, carrots and onions up and fry them off in a bit of oil until semi-browned. I also cut the carrots to be like pumpkins and cut some mushrooms in half and gave them spooky faces. The mushrooms can be added in with the rest of the vegetables and cooked down. Once they have browned, grate in two garlic cloves and let them cook for about 30 seconds before adding in your water and stock cubes. At this point, I also add in a bunch of parsley and pinch of chili flakes and let it simmer. I then scrape the foam from the top of the soup, to have a more clear broth, before adding in some chicken that’s been cooked and shredded. Cook up some pasta, add it in, and you’re good to go.

Chicken Parm Soup

I am not sure if this soup is super like Chicken Parm, but it’s a good chicken and tomato soup! I take an onion and fry it up in the oil, along with a bit of garlic right at the end. I then add in two tablespoons of tomato puree, let that cook for a moment, then add in italian seasonings, two cans of chopped tomatoes and some chicken stock. This all simmers together until it tastes less of tinned tomato. I then add in a bunch of shredded, pre-cooked chicken and some mozzarella cheese. Right before serving I add in some fresh parsley and some pasta! This one does feel like it’s great for any kids who like tomato soup.

Loaded Potato Soup

Loaded potato soup (or baked potato soup or jacket potato soup) is a really fun one, where you can sort of decide what you want on top. It’s a bit of a longer one to make, as you need to bake at least 6 potatoes, then shell out the potato filling. As that’s cooking, you want to melt down butter and flour in a pot, to thicken this soup, then slowly start adding in milk, cream and chicken stock until you have the amount of soup you want. This will then need to cook down with a few handfuls of cheese. While it’s cooking, we like to get some bacon fried up, grate some extra cheese for topping, put sour cream in a little bowl and cup up some chives. When you are basically ready to serve and it’s nice and thick, you want to add in your potatoes and smash them down a little. It’s a very filling soup!

Lasagna Soup

Lasagna soup went viral on the internet a few years back as a good way to use up broken lasagna noodles. Though there isn’t really any of those in our house, we do make a lot of lasagna soup all year round. This is done by frying off some sausages (you could use sausage meat) and onions in a pan, breaking them up while they cook. We find that these sausages taste the best in our soup! Then we add them to a pot with chicken stock, as that’s our favorite, two cans of crushed tomatoes, bay leaves, italian seasoning. Sometimes, we do throw in a jar or half a jar of left over pasta sauce, as this has garlic and seasonings, and is best used up. Once it’s been simmering away all day and we are ready to eat it (we often make this in a crock pot) we boil up some pasta and combine mozzarella cheese, parm cheese and ricotta in a bowl, stiring it together. This then tops our soup, as the cheese layer in the lasagna.

Broccoli Cheddar Soup

Broccoli cheddar soup is a classic in America, but in England, they have stilton instead. As someone who doesn’t like super strong cheese, broccoli cheddar always has a place in my heart. It’s made easily by taking a bunch of veggie stalk and boiling broccoli in it until it’s tender, then you want to blend it to your desired thickness. Add in cream, cheddar cheese, and cooked pasta in the soup – I tend to use shells but you can also keep the soup without pasta. If you’d like, you can reserve some of the broccoli that’s cooked and add it in after blending, with the shells, to add a bit of texture to your soup.

Beef Stew

Is beef stew a soup? I dunno, but we do eat it like a soup in the autumn months! This is normally a crockpot meal, with the first step being to take a large pan, put in a bit of oil, and cover your chunks of beef with flour, salt and pepper. You want to sear them off, put them in your crock pot, then sear off an onion diced up and a carrot cut to your liking. Once that’s cooked a bit, add them all to your crockpot and put in a bunch of water and your beef stock cubes, along with two bay leaves. This then should cook down during the day. About an hour before we want to eat, we adding a cornstarch slurry and some potatoes, then about 15 minutes before serving, we add in some frozen peas! This is always hearty and delicious.

Butternut Squash Soup

Butternut Squash Soup does feel like a much more adult soup then the others on the list, and as such, our kids aren’t the biggest fan. Dann and I, however, do love a good butternut squash soup, and have a whole step by step recipe if you would like to have this autumn classic on your dinner table.

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