Veggie life soon takes on a whole new colour with a dash of extra-virgin olive oil. This liquid gold turns any dish into a real treasure. If you’re a fan of vegetable soup, you’re in for a treat. So make sure you’ve got a bottle of extra-virgin olive oil to hand: it’s as vital as the air you breathe.
Obviously, you can make vegetable soup without extra-virgin olive oil, but the result is so disappointing that you’d never make that mistake twice. Not only do you need it to gently fry the vegetables or add some extra flavour by lightly frying some garlic, it also adds a delicious final touch at the end. There’s no better, or healthier, way to add flavour and character.
For example, the first step when making wild mushroom and chestnut soup, with added leeks and garlic, is to gently fry all the vegetables. Likewise with cauliflower and leek soup. And you can’t make seafood soup without first giving the prawns a good toss in a frying pan and sweating the onion and carrots. The same goes for all kinds of vegetable soup. Remember: the secret ingredient is extra-virgin olive oil.