Soups: step-by-step recipes

How to plan soups for the week

Soup is the most generous thing you can cook on a Sunday: one pot, several meals. The trick is to pair one long soup (borscht, shchi, solyanka, which take two to three hours but improve by the next day) with one quick soup (lentil, pumpkin or mushroom, ready in under an hour) for the middle of the week.

Before choosing, think about your fridge space and how many bowls you actually need. A classic borscht fills a big pot of eight servings; a creamy mushroom soup makes four. If you live alone, a big pot is still a good idea, as long as you plan to freeze half.

Tips that make home soups better

• Start meat in cold water and skim the foam as it heats: the broth stays clear and clean-tasting.
• Salt at the end. Broth reduces while it simmers, and pickles, sausage or olives in solyanka add their own salt.
• Add acid last. A splash of vinegar in borscht or lemon in lentil soup brightens the whole pot; add it off the heat and taste.
• Blend carefully. For cream soups, let the pot cool for a few minutes and blend in batches, then stir in the cream and warm through without boiling hard.

One more habit worth adopting: taste the soup twice, once halfway through and once at the end. Midway you can still fix the balance of vegetables and water; at the end you only adjust salt, pepper and acid.

A soup week that actually works

• Sunday: a big pot of classic beef borscht for Sunday dinner and Monday lunch.
• Tuesday: red lentil soup, 35 minutes from start to bowl.
• Thursday: creamy pumpkin soup with toasted bread.
• Saturday: chicken noodle soup, gentle and good for a lazy weekend lunch.

In hot weather, swap one of the evenings for cold okroshka with kefir.

Leftovers, freezing and budget notes

Borscht, shchi and lentil soup freeze well in portion containers for up to about three months. Cream soups freeze better before you add the cream. Noodle soup is best eaten within two days: cook the noodles separately if you plan to keep it longer, or they will swell and soak up the broth.

For children, a smooth pumpkin or chicken noodle soup is usually an easy sell. On a budget, lentils and cabbage are your friends: red lentil soup and shchi feed a family for little money and taste even better the next day.