BOOK: 50 Simple Soups For The Slow Cooker

October 31, 2012 at 8:08 am · Filed under Recipes, Soups, Thanksgiving & Fall

Make exciting soups in a slow cooker. Photo
courtesy Andrews McMeel Publishing.

Do you want to make your own soups but don’t have the time?

Make them in a slow cooker. Lynn Alley’s book, 50 Simple Soups For The Slow Cooker, is a treasure trove of delectable recipes. No slow cooker? You can use a rice cooker instead.

“Simple” soups are simple to make, but big in flavor. Some of the 50 recipes include:

Blue Cheese Potato Soup

Curried Butternut Squash Soup

Eggplant Soup With Cumin, Yogurt & Dill

Pasta e Fagioli Soup

Spanish Potato And Green Olive Soup

There are also family favorites from black bean soup and corn chowder to French onion soup and minestrone. Global recipes range from Greek avgolemmono and Middle Eastern hummus soup to Japanese miso soup and Mexican posole.

Every recipe looks so good, we’re going to start at the beginning and work our way through. At one soup per week, that’s almost a year’s worth.

RECIPE: APPLE PIE SOUP FOR THE SLOW
COOKER

This easy-to-prepare seasonal soup can be enjoyed as a conventional soup course, as as a small “intermezzo” between the appetizer and main course (serve it in espresso cups or other small vessels) or as a dessert course—again, in a small cup as part of a larger dessert, or in a regular bowl.

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 4 hours
Yield: Serves 4 to 6

Ingredients

1 stick cinnamon

6 cloves

6 allspice berries

Apple pie soup: familiar and delicious. Photo courtesy Andrews McMeel Publishing.

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted

5 large Granny Smith apples, quartered, cored, and sliced

5 cups water

2/3 cup raisins

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

3 to 4 tablespoons honey (optional)

1/2 cup Greek-style yogurt or sour cream (we used fat-free Greek yogurt)

Preparation

1. GRIND. Using a spice grinder or mortar and pestle, grind the cinnamon, cloves and allspice to a fine powder.

2. COOK. Place the butter and apples in a 7-quart slow cooker. Cover and cook on LOW for 2 to 3 hours, until the apples are soft and the juice nice and browned. Mash any large pieces of apple, then add the water, spices, and raisins and continue cooking for 2 hours longer.

3. ADD. Just before serving, stir in the lemon juice and honey. To serve, ladle the soup into bowls and top with the yogurt or sour cream. The tartness of the yogurt is a nice counterpoint to the sweet apples and raisins.

Find more of our favorite soup recipes.

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