Everyone Loves soup!

There are some rules that are basic to almost all soup recipes.

Sauté onions and other veggies like mushroom, celery, pepper and carrot (adding them to the pan in that order) in the bottom of a large saucepan in a few tablespoons of oil (or if you are watching your fat intake a few tablespoons of broth, if using the broth, it evaporates quickly so watch and add more as needed). If using garlic add at the end of the sauté for a few seconds before adding broth (over cooked garlic is bitter). 

Add broth and then cook all root veggies, if making tomato soup add chopped tomatoes instead of broth (to thicken tomatoes soup you can add tomato paste or simply cook longer until it thickens). 

If using meats; add ground beef, ham, beef strips or bacon early with the onions (bacon can be cooked separate and then added, I find the fat overwhelming if bacon is used to sauté the onions).  Fish is added at the last minute of the finished soup since it cooks so quickly. 

Chicken soup is made easily by putting a chicken carcass in a pot of water after you have baked a chicken. Simply boil until the meat falls off the bone and then cool and pick out the bone and gristle. To make chicken broth, purchase inexpensive backs and necks at the butcher and boil them in water until the meat falls off easily. Then just remove the chicken completely. Refrigerate broth or chicken soup made from a carcass until the fat forms a solid layer on the top, remove the fat layer then continue as above. 

For chicken soup with a carcass, sauté the veggies separately and add to the broth and chicken. 

I have found it works much better to cook noodles, rice and barley separate from the soup itself and add to the soup at the end. If you like, you can cook them in broth or just water is fine.  

I have found that keeping the veggie sizes uniform throughout a soup creates a consistent soup, so with a bean soup, chop the veggies about the size of the bean used or if you have big chunks of chicken chop similarly sized veggies.