Three feel-good vegetable soups that take you from winter to spring
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At the start of this year, I did some positive reframing of my self-flagellating resolutions and resolved to be nice to myself instead, by always having something healthy and comforting on hand to eat. That is: soup!
This is only the second resolution I’ve ever kept for this long (the other was to return grocery carts to their corral), and as we begin to dip a toe into spring, me and soup are still going strong.
Soup has a reputation as a cold-weather food, but why? Sure, it’s (usually) warm, but so are a lot of dishes. Plus soup is healthy, hearty, convenient to freeze and easy to warm up. It’s also economical. Assuming you have olive oil and salt, the soups here cost $15 to $35 (including $10 for a hunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano) to make.
The chili at Chasen’s was legendary. My version puts the flavor of chiles front and center, just like the chile-based stews my step-mother taught me to make in Mexico City.
Because I work at home, for me, having soup in the fridge or freezer makes the difference between a quick and easy nourishing meal and who knows what expensive, questionably healthy alternative. And what better way than offering a bowl (or take-out container) of soup to comfort a friend. Soup is like the food version of a hug, and who couldn’t use one of those all year long.
Despite bright blue skies (when it isn’t raining), warmer afternoons and daylight into the evenings, when it comes to vegetables, it’s winter. Sure, the occasional bunch of asparagus has cropped up at farmers markets around town, but mostly local farmers are still showcasing piles and crates and still more piles of winter’s cruciferous vegetables — broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, rutabaga and leafy greens — many of which make an appearance in the soups featured here.
Much like the month of March, the soups featured here bridge winter and spring.
Rich lentil soup — which, incidentally, started my soup obsession long, long ago — is brightened up with parsley pistou, a pesto-like mixture of parsley, garlic, olive oil and salt. When I had just begun my career as a food writer, I was eating out several nights a week and enjoying a lot of very rich foods — fun as it was, I often didn’t feel great as a result. I went to a nutritionist, and among the many remedies and suggestions that came out of that meeting was lentil soup. Years later, a pot of lentils simmering on my stove is proof positive that I’m prioritizing my health.
Pureed broccoli-fennel soup was inspired by one that Gino Angelini makes and serves year-round at Osteria Angelini. He combines broccoli with another vegetable — asparagus in the spring, zucchini in the summer — with I don’t want to know how much olive oil. In my version, each bowl contains about half a head of broccoli, so even though I make it because I enjoy the taste, I also feel like with every bowlful, I’m doing something good for myself.
Tuscan vegetable soup began its life as the ribollita (Tuscan vegetable soup thickened with bread) at Osteria Mozza; that version is cooked down to a thick mush, formed into a patty, pan-fried and drowned in peppery olive oil. Just after testing that recipe for “The Mozza Cookbook,” I spent a long cold winter into spring in a small hillside town in Umbria. When I wasn’t indulging in leisurely afternoon lunches of pasta and wine in surrounding hillside towns, I could be found making a double batch of this veggie-packed soup. My version stops short of adding the bread; it’s recognizable as soup (not a fried patty!), since the soup’s second job, after being delicious, was to offset those meals.
I find making soup equally as satisfying as eating it. The shopping. The chopping. The sautéing. Yes, even the waiting. I don’t use a slow cooker, or a pressure cooker. I like to stir. And I like the aromas that come from old-fashioned pot-on-the stove cooking. For me, the patience it requires is part of the experience of soup, and you’re paid back in dividends, because — and here’s the best part about soup — you generally have more than you need at the moment. So you can enjoy some now and freeze the rest for a desperate day.
Like baking, there’s also something appealingly mysterious about soup — the way in which a bunch of unrelated ingredients turn into something so much greater than the sum of its parts. But totally not like baking, making soup is flexible and forgiving. Don’t have this vegetable? Use that one!
I often add a fennel bulb (diced) to my lentils, and if I want to make it heartier, I’ll sauté kale with garlic, olive oil and crumbled Italian sausage and put that on top. Butternut squash is delicious (albeit sweet) in the Tuscan veggie soup. And I have my broccoli soup pretty much down to a formula: You could clean the crisper drawer of your refrigerator with this recipe. Add a handful of spinach at the very end. Throw in a bunch of kale, collards or chard, or asparagus or zucchini, depending on the season.
Soup is hard to mess up, unless you burn it, which is difficult to do given that it’s mostly water.
How two restaurants — and others — joined forces to start Rogue Foods LA and how you can re-create its comforting recipes at home.
Part of the beauty of soup is its simplicity. Still, it’s nice to dress soup up once in a while. For that, I included two options: the parsley “pistou” for the lentil soup (the “pistou” is in quotes because traditionally it’s made with basil) and crunchy garlic croutons for the broccoli-fennel soup. A drizzle of really nice olive oil and a grating of Parmigiano-Reggiano are also delicious, easy ways to embellish a humble bowl of soup.
With all that’s been going on in the news and in my own life so far in 2025, my one constant — for me and anyone I’ve come into close contact with — has been soup. Having a tough day? I’ve found myself walking to my neighborhood farmers market on Larchmont Boulevard and grabbing what I need for a pot of soup. I feel better already on the walk home, knowing what’s in my not-so-distant future. And as I put on a playlist and start the chopping and sautéing, the rest, the things I can’t control, begin to fade into the background.
When life happens, I make soup.
Get the recipes
We'll Always Have Italy Vegetable Soup
Health Is Wealth Lentil Soup
Broccoli-Fennel Soup With Garlic Croutons
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