Favourites: barley and root vegetables, sorrel or leek and potato, mushroom, tomato, pumpkin, borscht, gaspacho.
Two weeks ago for the first time, I tasted a soup that was so awful I couldn't take a second sip. It was a strange mix of turmeric, coriander root, leaf & seed, and coconut cream - tasted like sour-bitter soap. Since I was a guest it was embarrassing; I didn't want to offend the cook-hostess. I pretended to be feeling ill to excuse myself from the table and tipped the stuff down the sink when no one was looking.
True. :) Under normal circumstances I like coriander, though as a light flavouring or garnish. I think in this case it was somewhat overdone, but the main culprit was the turmeric. Also the coconut was in some way cloying. I think the soup would have been better with a rich vegetable broth as the base, and maybe a teaspoon of miso and some pepper, ginger, and/or garlic.
Odd thing was, I hadn't eaten for twenty hours and should have been hungry enough to enjoy almost anything edible.
We eat miso soup almost daily. With seaweed, carrots, leek, celery root, and mushrooms, Often I put some dill in at the end of cooking or scatter a few lentils in at the beginning. Which I make a big pot of once a week. I make vegetarian bean soups as well- split pea, red lentil, navy bean, very occasionally black bean. Sometimes I make broth bowls as a one-dish meal which are like a soup base with brown rice, whole wheat noodles, and a lot of vegetables and at times even fish in them.
Favorites are tomato and minestrone. Least favorite is that disgusting navy bean stuff that I've actually seen people dump a bunch of ketchup into. Bleh.
Since I was a little kid, Campbell's Chicken Noodle. My entire right arm was grown from that stuff. Back in the 80s, they improved the quality by replacing the ugly dark meat and putting in better looking breast meat. However, soup sales must be dropping since the local Krogers supermarket has diminished the area devoted to soup. (it must be all the salt in the soup that hurts sales)
Campbell's makes a low salt line of soups, but they taste like dishwater. I've been buying a very tasty butternut squash soup at Target. There is also a cashew, carrot, ginger and squash soup from the same brand (Pacific Foods) that has a little zing to it. They are a bit higher in sodium than I would like, but worth it.
Imagine and Pacific both have good reputations and some of those soups really help me in a pinch because I am too busy to cook most days. Also, as you probably do too, I put some fresh or cooked vegetables in the soups. Like if it is a tomato soup, I'll add a fresh tomato or mushroom soup, I'll grind up or cook more mushrooms into it.
They are very much better to me than Campbells' anything. Campbell's also comes canned and there is a lot of controversy out there regarding canned foods.