Many kitchen gadgets are a triumph of desire over need (or even utility) but occasionally a product comes along that is genuinely useful and time saving. My soup maker is one of those.

You’ll find loads of recipes for soup makers with a quick search and some are really nice but nothing beats the simplicity of pot luck cupboard soup. Grab all the veg you can find in the fridge or cupboards and roughly chop it before throwing into the soup maker with a stock cube, seasoning and fill to the soup maker’s max line with freshly boiled water. Turn it on and 20 minutes later you’ll have fresh soup, different every time.

Below are the ingredients I had at hand today, you can tell from the random measures that this is just a pot luck, thrown together thing. Yum.

Take the nutritional facts with a pinch of salt because they’ll obviously vary according to what ingredients you throw in.

Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 122g mushrooms
• 280g carrots
• 158g leek
• 134g celery
• 180g tomatoes
• 3 garlic cloves
• 101g onion
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 0.5 tsp salt
• 0.5 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 vegetable stock cube
• 900ml freshly boiled water

Method

• Roughly chop all of the ingredients and pop in the soup maker.
• Add the water to the fill line, turn it on to blend/puree soup mode and wait for the cycle to complete.
• No soup maker? Bring it all to boil in a pan, cover and reduce to a simmer for 20 minutes. Then blend with a stick blender.