Healthy Winter Soup Recipes: Easy & Warming Ideas
Soup is one of the meals I genuinely fancy more once the weather turns cold. A salad might sound lovely in July, but when it’s dark ridiculously early and I’ve spent half the day wondering whether it’s acceptable to put the heating on yet, a warm bowl of soup is much more appealing.
There are also so many different kinds of soup that I don’t think it needs to get boring. You can have a light vegetable soup for lunch one day and something thick with lentils, pasta or potatoes the next. Some are perfect for using vegetables that are lurking in the fridge, while others are substantial enough that you really don’t need much else with them.
These are some of my favourite healthy winter soup ideas from Just Average Jen, including plenty of vegetarian choices as well as some more filling options for days when a little bowl of blended vegetables simply isn’t going to cut it.
What makes a good winter soup?
For me, a winter soup needs to feel like an actual meal rather than flavoured hot water!
That doesn’t necessarily mean it needs cream, meat or loads of cheese. Lentils, beans, potatoes and pasta can all make soup much more substantial, while vegetables such as carrots, parsnips, squash, mushrooms and broccoli work brilliantly in colder-weather soups.
It’s also worth thinking about what you actually enjoy. There’s no prize for making an incredibly virtuous vegetable soup if you spend the entire afternoon thinking about biscuits because your lunch didn’t fill you up.
Lentil soups for winter
Lentils are one of my favourite ingredients for making soup more filling, particularly because I’m vegetarian and they’re such an easy ingredient to keep in the cupboard.
My red lentil soup is a lovely simple option when you want something warming without needing an enormous list of ingredients.
There’s also my red pepper and lentil soup, which has a slightly different flavour and is another good way of getting vegetables and lentils into the same meal.
Lentil soups tend to thicken as they sit, so don’t panic if leftovers look much thicker the following day. You can usually loosen them with a little extra stock or water when reheating.
Carrot soup with ginger and orange
Carrots are cheap, easy to get hold of throughout winter and work particularly well with warming flavours.
My carrot, ginger and orange soup combines the sweetness of carrot and orange with ginger, making it a nice alternative when you’re bored of more traditional vegetable soups.
This is one I’d choose for lunch rather than when I wanted the most substantial dinner imaginable, although you can always add bread or another side if you want something more filling.
Curried parsnip soup
Parsnips definitely feel like a winter vegetable to me, and my curried parsnip soup is a good way to use them for something other than a roast dinner.
The potato helps give the soup a thicker consistency while curry powder adds warmth without turning it into an incredibly spicy soup.
It’s also one of the soups you can make in a soup maker as well as on the hob, which is handy if yours gets as much use as mine during the colder months.
Easy mushroom soup
If you’re a mushroom fan, my easy mushroom soup is another lovely cold-weather option.
Mushrooms have quite a savoury flavour anyway, so they’re particularly good when you want a vegetarian soup that doesn’t feel as though something is missing.
I like mushroom soup fairly thick, although you can adjust the consistency depending on whether you’re eating it as a light lunch or want something a bit more substantial.
Tomato and basil soup
There is nothing particularly seasonal about tomatoes these days, but tomato soup still feels like proper cold-weather comfort food to me.
My tomato and basil soup is a simple one to have with toast, crusty bread or a sandwich. It’s also useful when different people in the house want different things because soup and sandwiches require considerably less negotiation than trying to find one dinner everybody agrees on!
Broccoli and cheese soup
Sometimes I want a vegetable soup and sometimes I want vegetables accompanied by a frankly generous amount of cheese.
My Instant Pot broccoli and cheese soup falls firmly into the second category. It combines broccoli and carrots with cream cheese and cheddar and is considerably richer than most of the vegetable soups on this list.
I wouldn’t choose it because I was trying to make the lightest lunch possible. I’d choose it because broccoli and melted cheddar taste lovely together, which is a perfectly valid reason to eat something!
Butternut squash soup
Butternut squash is another ingredient that seems made for autumn and winter soup.
My butternut squash soup is smooth, warming and naturally slightly sweet. Squash also works brilliantly with spices, so it’s an easy soup to adjust if you like stronger flavours.
If you’ve ever bought an enormous butternut squash with good intentions and then stared at it for several days wondering what on earth you’re going to do with it, soup is usually the answer.
Red pepper and butternut squash soup
For something slightly different, try my red pepper and butternut squash soup.
The peppers add another layer of sweetness and flavour to the squash, so this is a good one if plain butternut squash soup doesn’t particularly excite you.
It’s also a lovely colour, which shouldn’t matter but somehow does when winter outside is approximately seventeen shades of grey.
Minestrone soup
When I want soup to feel more like a proper meal, minestrone soup is an obvious choice.
With vegetables, tomatoes and pasta, there’s far more going on than you’d get from a simple blended vegetable soup. It’s the kind of soup I’d happily have for dinner rather than feeling as though I’d only eaten a starter.
It’s also useful for using vegetables you already have, although I’d follow the recipe before randomly emptying the entire vegetable drawer into the pan!
Vegetable pasta soup
Another more filling choice is my hearty vegetable pasta soup.
Adding pasta is such a simple way of turning vegetable soup into something more substantial, particularly if you’re feeding someone who regards ordinary vegetable soup as an appetiser rather than lunch.
I’ve also got a collection of easy pasta soup recipes if you like this style of soup.
Coconut and pea soup
Pea soup doesn’t necessarily scream winter in quite the same way as parsnip or squash, but my coconut and pea soup is useful when you want something completely different from all the root-vegetable soups that appear at this time of year.
Frozen peas also mean you’re not dependent on whatever happens to be in season or sitting in the vegetable drawer.
It’s handy to have a couple of soups like this in your repertoire for the point in winter when you realise you’ve eaten approximately your own body weight in carrots.
Italian meatball soup
For the meat eaters, my Italian meatball soup is a much heartier option.
Meatballs and tomato make it much closer to a full dinner than a light bowl of soup, so it’s one to consider when you want warming winter comfort food rather than just something quick for lunch.
If you’re vegetarian like me, there are enough meat-free soups here that you certainly don’t need to feel left out!
Which winter soups are the most filling?
If soup doesn’t normally keep you full for long, look beyond simply increasing the portion size.
Soups containing lentils, beans, pasta or potatoes tend to feel more substantial than very light blended vegetable soups. What you serve alongside them matters too.
A bread roll, crusty bread, toast or sandwich can turn a smaller bowl of soup into a much more satisfying meal.
Personally, I’d rather have a sensible portion of soup with something alongside it than eat an enormous bowl and still feel as though lunch was somehow incomplete.
Easy winter soups for batch cooking
Soup is brilliant for batch cooking, but how well it stores can depend on the ingredients.
Vegetable and lentil soups are often particularly straightforward, while soups containing pasta or dairy can change texture after chilling or freezing. Pasta continues absorbing liquid, while creamy or cheese-based soups can sometimes separate slightly.
Check the storage advice on the individual recipe rather than assuming every soup behaves in exactly the same way.
If you’re batch cooking, portioning soup before storing it also means you can reheat exactly what you need rather than warming the entire batch repeatedly.
Soup maker recipes for winter
My soup maker gets considerably more appealing when the weather turns cold because you can put everything in and leave it to get on with making lunch.
I’ve got a whole collection of soup maker recipes as well as my guide to the benefits of a soup maker if you’re wondering whether buying one would actually be useful.
Not every soup needs a dedicated appliance, of course. A saucepan and stick blender can make excellent soup too, so I certainly wouldn’t rush out and buy one just because winter has arrived.
Slow cooker and Instant Pot soups
A slow cooker or Instant Pot gives you even more options.
Pressure cooking is useful when you want something ready relatively quickly, while the slow cooker is great when you’d rather get dinner started earlier and forget about it for a few hours.
Have a look through my easy Instant Pot recipes and slow cooker recipes if you want more cold-weather meal ideas beyond soup.
What can I serve with winter soup?
Bread is the obvious answer, but there are plenty of options.
Crusty bread, toast, bread rolls and garlic bread all work depending on the soup. A cheese toastie with tomato soup is difficult to beat, while a more substantial soup containing pasta or lentils might not need anything alongside it.
You can also add toppings such as herbs, grated cheese, yoghurt, seeds or croutons where they suit the recipe.
I’d choose the extras according to how hungry you are rather than feeling that every bowl of soup needs to be accompanied by half a loaf of bread!
More healthy soup recipes
These are the soups I’d particularly associate with cold weather, but there are plenty more in my healthy soup recipes collection.
You’ll find lighter soups, vegetable soups, creamy soups and plenty of ideas that work at other times of year too.
And if you’re following Slimming World, I’ve also put my Slimming World soup recipes together separately so you don’t have to work through every soup on the site trying to find the ones that are most relevant to you.
