Vegetable Soup is hearty and full of nourishing veggies like tomatoes, corn, green beans, celery, and potatoes, ready in under 45 minutes!
When it’s cold outside, warm up in the kitchen with all of your favorites like Ultimate Slow Cooker Pot Roast, Classic Beef Chili and Ultimate Sloppy Joes! These are some of the heartiest and easiest Main Courses you can make at home.
Vegetable Soup is the PERFECT healthy dish for a cold day, made with fresh vegetables like hearty potatoes and corn, green beans, celery, carrots, and onions in a seasoned chicken broth. Once you try this it will become one of your favorite soup recipes of all time. Serve this with toasted Garlic Bread, a side salad, and some cheddar or parmesan cheese on top.
This recipe is one of the oldest recipes in the world! From the dawning of fireproof and waterproof cooking vessels (probably made of thick earthenware), humankind has gathered the vegetables and herbs and put them into a liquid dish to cook. There’s a billion different ways to combine food for a nutritious and flavorful soup. This recipe is just one of the most common in the world!
You can make this on the stovetop because it’s pretty quick to throw together, but it does really well in both the slow cooker and the instant pot as well. Once you try this soup recipe, you will never look at the store-bought stuff the same way again.
How to Make Vegetable Soup
This vegetable soup recipe is really versatile. You can use whatever veggies that are in season, or this is a great recipe to use up leftover veggies from the night before. You could also make this using Italian seasoning blend, or oregano, parsley, and thyme with various different types of broths for variety and flavor. Check out our recipe here:
- Prepare – Gather, wash, and chop all the vegetables.
- Saute – In the pot or Dutch Oven, cook the celery, garlic, and onions together which helps add a wonderful earthy flavor to the soup.
- Combine – Once that’s ready, add the rest of the vegetables and seasonings to the pot.
- Liquidate – Add in the liquid (we’re using chicken broth and V8 juice in this recipe.) Note: For a thicker soup base, add 4-5 tablespoons of tomato puree.
- Simmer – Once it’s boiling, reduce to a simmer. Keep the lid on so all the liquid doesn’t evaporate. Then enjoy!
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Frequently Asked Questions
Vegetables should be chopped to about an inch long so they can easily fit onto a spoon. Smaller cuts also prevent choking hazards, especially for young children.
Yes. To save time, you can substitute a drained can of diced tomatoes for hand-diced tomatoes in this homemade vegetable soup recipe. Or if you prefer to use all canned vegetables or frozen veggies, like frozen corn, that makes for a super easy weeknight meal. You can add the water from the cans directly into the bowl, no need to drain.
Add any combination of your favorite vegetables including bell peppers, mixed frozen veggies, parsnips, chickpeas, kidney beans, zucchini, kale, spinach or shredded cabbage.
Crusty bread served with a healthy soup made with fresh herbs is one of the best comfort foods in the world. Skillet Cornbread is a great option to make!
If you don’t have any dietary restrictions, try adding a bit of salt and a scoop of real butter. If the soup is cooked with an unctuous piece of roast beef, it will lend a mouthwatering and rich flavor to your soup. Up the amount of garlic as well when cooking.
Adding and mixing herbs is almost a precision science. Fresh herbs add a lot of good flavor, while dried herbs are deeper in flavor which means you can add less. Italian herb blends will be perfect for this recipe. Additionally, add two or three dried Bay leaves to the soup to really give it that boost of flavor. Some say this is the secret ingredient, or at least the most important ingredient in their soup!
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Key Ingredients for Vegetable Soup
- Vegetables – This recipe uses a large variety of vegetables. When selecting vegetables, choose the freshest you can find in the market. Watch out for mold, decay, and other things you wouldn’t want to purposefully ingest.
- Soup Base – We’re using V8 juice and chicken broth as the soup base. V8 juice is packed with flavor and vitamins and adds character. Chicken broth adds an almost buttery addition without dairy. You can also change which broth you’re using depending on your flavor preference.
Alternative Cooking Methods
- Slow Cooker – Vegetable soup is REALLY easy to make in the slow cooker. Just put everything in, stir to mix together, and cook on low for eight hours or on high for four hours. You can refer to this Slow Cooker Vegetable Beef Soup for a similar version (but with beef – which you can definitely leave out if you want).
- Instant Pot – This is the perfect recipe to use with your Instant Pot! Just place all of your ingredients in the instant pot. Lock the lid and seal the pressure valve. On manual mode, set the instant pot for 10 minutes on high. Let it release naturally.
Variations on Vegetable Soup
- Meat Lovers – Add browned beef, turkey, sausage, or cubed extra firm tofu to this recipe for a higher protein option. You can also use leftover Rotisserie Chicken.
- Tex-Mex – Make your own Homemade Taco Seasoning and cook with ground beef for a Tex-Mex veggie soup. Serve your soup with sour cream and crunchy tortilla chips.
- Pure Vegan Soup – Use vegetable broth instead of chicken broth to make this soup vegan friendly. If you’re going to add leafy greens to the soup, like kale or spinach, add them about 20 minutes before you’re ready to serve.
- Vegetarian Soup – This recipe is dairy free as-is, but you can change the chicken broth to veggie broth, add ¾ cup of half and half just before serving to make this soup vegetarian friendly.
- Noodle Soup – Add a half cup of al dente pasta right before serving to add some filling carbs to this vegetable soup recipe.
- Spicy Soup – Add a dash of cayenne pepper, diced jalapeño, or red pepper flakes to add some spicy seasoning to this soup.
- Winter Soup – For a fun winter soup, you can add sweet potatoes and canned white beans to the recipe for a hearty soup. If the beans are dry, let the soak overnight or get boiled for 15 mins before being added to the soup base. For every half cup of par-cooked beans, add a cup of broth or water.
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How to Store Vegetable Soup
- Serve: Vegetable Soup can be left at room temperature for up to two hours, or kept warm in a crock pot for up to 4 hours once it’s finished cooking.
- Store: Vegetable soup will last wrapped tightly in the refrigerator for about 4 days. Reheat your soup over medium-low heat on the stove, stirring occasionally until warm.
- Freeze: Vegetable soup is perfect for making ahead and freezing. Let the soup cool down completely, then seal it in an airtight container and freeze for up to 5-6 months. If you make a double batch when you make this, you can freeze some for a quick dinner another night.
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1 yellow onion , diced
- 2 stalks celery , diced
- 2 cloves garlic , minced
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper
- 1 large potato , peeled and diced
- 2 carrots , sliced
- 1 cup corn
- 1 cup peas
- 1 cup green beans , chopped
- 2 vine tomatoes , diced
- 4 cups chicken broth
- 2 cups V-8 juice
Instructions
- In a large stock pot add the olive oil over medium heat and sauté the onions, celery and garlic for 4-5 minutes until translucent.
- Add in the rest of the ingredients and bringing to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for 30 minutes.
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Love this soup… best Vegetable one I’ve made. No fresh tomatoes, but I added an extra cup of V8 juice, , 1/4 pearl barley and 2 teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce. Delicious
The V-8 juice gives the soup a lot of very good flavor!!! This is my go to vegetable soup recipe. Thank you so much for sharing!!! It’s a winner!!!
The best and easy. Only 5 www points per servings
I’m not really a vegetable person but I’m trying. This soup is delicious!!!
Great recipe, delicious soup! One question.. It says 6 servings, but I dont see the serving size listed. What is the serving size?
That’s a bit tricky with soups, but I would say between 1 1/2 – 2 cups. The only way to be sure it to measure once it is done. With simmering and differences in heat and sizes of vegetables there are too many variables to give an accurate measurement.
Sabrina, how can I add stew beef to this and put it in a crockpot without turning it into beef stew?
So easy. Delicious! Will add to my favorite soup list for the fall/winter. I love soup and this hits the spot. I am adding spinach to this pot of soup as I love lots of vegetables. This is great for the cold days with a grilled cheese sandwich. Thank you for sharing this recipe.????
Perfect soup recipe! Love the flavor and simplicity. I added frozen Lima beans and a few tablespoons of sugar to cut the acidity of the tomatoes. I used 1 can of petite diced tomatoes instead of cutting fresh tomatoes to save time. I also used frozen peas and green beans instead of fresh. It was perfect! I ate on this soup for multiple days and craved it so much! It is great with a hot grilled cheese sandwich.
I was wondering why chicken broth instead of vegetable broth? Is one more tastier than the other?
I made this soup and ate 3 big bowls! It’s absolutely to die for yummy!!! I can’t wait to make this soup twice a week for my family.
Absolutely amazing soup. I did add rinsed black beans instead of potatoes plus had left over taco meat (ground venison) and added about 1 1/4 cups ended up delicious . This is my new go to soup ?
I LOVE this soup! I make it at least three times a month. It’s my go-to meal because of all the veggies, and the broth is excellent! I leave out the potatoes, and I add beans, especially Lima beans. I add two small zucchini’s in the last 10 minutes of cooking, and I season with Thyme.
Thanks so much for this recipe.
My go to vegetable soup ! Delicious and hearty.
I forgot to leave a 5 star rating!
I just made this soup for the first time tonight and WOW was it good! I live in Colorado and we are getting lots of snow tonight so I didn’t want to go out but everyone was hungry and looking at me with that, ‘what’s for dinner look’. I had everything in the recipe except for the V8 which would be the deal breaker BUT I did have some Zing Zang Bloody Mary mix (don’t judge me!) so I used that as a substitute. I also had to use mostly canned veggies but in a pinch, I figured that would be ok. I also had some rotisserie chicken left over that I threw in. Lastly, I doubled the recipe and if you were wondering if it would still fit in a 6.5 Quart Dutch Oven, I’m hear to tell you it won’t, no matter how hard you try, trust me!!! One last thing: I added a bottle of Chardonnay – ok, that was for me to drink because I nervous as everyone was hungry! No need as it turned out AMAZING! I am so grateful for this recipe. Thank you so much!!!
It is snowing here in Colorado and I am definitely trying in. I so want to make this soup and I have everything except V8 juice. What can I use as a substitute? Would a Bloody Mary mix work? Help!
Delicious soup and easy recipe
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My favorite go to soup during the winter months. I do add 4c instead of 2 of v8 and add some tomato paste. Overall delicious and healthy!
I make with frozen peas and corn but use spicy, low-sodium, V-8 and add frozen baby lima beans-so VERY few changes. Amazing! Love this soup!
My husband is a meat-eater and didn’t seem happy but finally admitted “it’s a good vegetable soup. I just want meat.” But now, after big weeks of eating out, or holidays, get-togethers, etc… he’ll actually request this to have a healthy but hearty meal.
I usually serve with a crusty 3-cheese bread.
Loved this! I added a little crushed red pepper and topped my bowl with a some parmesan cheese. I use v8 when making pasta fasioli and it makes a difference. I may add some macaroni next time or a little rice. What a great recipe! Thank you!
I made this yesterday and it is delicious. My family doesn’t like like soups or stews with tomatoes, so I didn’t put them in, but added a can of kidney beans that I rinsed. I also used chicken broth and added 2 tsp. of Better Than Boullian Beef flavor.
What can I use in place of V-8? Not really crazy about it.
I’d like to know this, as well.
Hi Rachel! You can use a tomato sauce if you prefer.
You can replace it with a tomato sauce if you prefer.
My family and I absolutely love this recipe! A must have for cold winter nights! Wondering if there’s any way this could be made in a slow cooker?
Your recipes look so delicious, but are totally out of reach for many because of the high sodium. It would be wonderful if you could offer less sodium options.
You could try and interchange the broth for low sodium broth? And cooking is experimentation so change out what ever makes it work for you. I hope you get to try it!
I use low or no sodium broth, v8 juice, and no salt added canned tomatoes. It’s delicious as I no longer even like dishes that are too salty.
The recipe is great!