There is no great secret to making soup! Add some veggies to a good stock, don't over cook everything, and serve it with a tasty accompaniment such as crusty bread or crackers.
My stock recipe is quite simple. Usually I will go with a teaspoon of vegetable stock powder, a teaspoon of mushroom seasoning, and three heaped teaspoons of nutritional yeast, all stirred into about 300ml of boiling water from the kettle.
For this one, I grabbed a can of lentils and a can of sweetcorn from the store cupboard, but there are so many other options - beans, peas, lentils, leeks, more potato, more onions. Go with whatever you have.
I start with a large soup pot, some oil and one onion, diced. If you don't love oil, it is perfectly acceptable to start the onion off in hot water.
After the onion I will usually add in one potato that has been chopped to a small dice, and one chopped garlic clove. Some don't love too much garlic, and there is often garlic powder in a veg stock, so leave out if you want. Throw in some salt, a stir every so often so the potato doesn't stick.
At this stage you could also add celery, carrot, swede, or any other root veg. Even cabbage is a great option here. Always chopped small to cook quickly.
For this soup I went in with a 400g can of lentils, including the salted water that it was canned in. Also added a small can of salt-free sweetcorn.
The soup is boiled until the hardest vegetable - for me it was the potato - is cooked.
I served immediately, but you could also blend the soup, either a little or completely, with an immersion blender. I prefer to have the textures and colours of the different veg in this one. If it was a more potato-based or swede-based, with a more homogenous colour, I usually prefer to blend.