Soup is a fixture in my house all year long, but in the fall, soup feels especially right. The daylight is less abundant and time indoors increases. A big pot simmering on the stove not only adds a sense of hominess and comfort—it also often yields enough for leftovers, or to share with friends.
We have soups with pumpkin, sweet potato, and winter squash. We have steamy takes on chicken noodle. We have brothy soups and ones that flirt with stew status. Some need hours. And we also have ones that are ready from soup to nuts in fewer than 30 minutes. Bookmark what catches your eye and circle back soon to make it a reality. We promise you'll be glad you did.
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French Onion Soup
This is the most popular soup recipe on our site for a reason: it's better than anything you'd order at a restaurant, and pulling it off at home is empowering, like a magic trick. Just follow the directions and you'll be golden. The onions need plenty of time to caramelize, so plan accordingly.
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White Bean and Bacon Soup
Start with dry beans to make this lazy weekend soup and it'll simmer away while you fold the laundry or relax with your favorite feed. Don't feel like messing with dried beans? We offer alternate directions for using canned ones.
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Shrimp and Chorizo Chowder
The broth alone in this flavor-packed chowder will have you licking the bowl. It doesn't have a ton of ingredients, but they include some major power players: smoked paprika, Spanish chorizo, and succulent little shrimp. Be sure to have crusty bread for dipping.
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Taco Soup
Faces perk up when they discover taco soup is on the night's menu. The biggest win may be for the cook, since it's so easy to throw together. Double it for freeze-worthy leftovers.
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Lemon Chicken Soup (Avgolemono)
How is this timeless Greek soup creamy without any dairy? Just before serving, you add tempered egg yolks. This version is a one-bowl dinner and especially packed with goodness, including chicken and kale.
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Roasted Kabocha Squash Soup
Funky, knobby kabocha squash have the densest, richest flesh ever. Roasting one makes that flavor even deeper.
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Turkey Meatball Soup With Spinach and Orzo
Hearty and light at the same time, this soup has all the things: veggies, little pasta bits, and tasty spoon-sized meatballs made from scratch. But I don't see any reason not to pick up refrigerated or frozen meatballs and use those as a shortcut.
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Butternut Squash Soup
The addition of an apple adds another subtle layer of sweetness to this simple soup. Sub vegetable stock to make it vegetarian. Readers love this soup and offer plenty of their own noteworthy spins in the comments.
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Creamy Chicken Enchilada Soup
Get your enchilada action going on a weeknight when you make this easy, hearty soup.
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Lasagna Soup
Pish-posh, why labor over assembling and baking lasagna when that winning combo of flavors and textures is within reach just by making soup?
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Pozole Rojo
It's cheating to call this a soup, perhaps. This pozole is a delightful pork stew with a broth of earthy pureed dried chiles. You set out many little bowls of garnishes like chopped cilantro and sliced radishes, they way you would at taco night. But I'll go for pozole over tacos any day.
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Creamy Tortellini Soup With Sausage and Spinach
Every time we share this recipe in one of our email newsletters, readers take note, make it at home, and leave glowing reviews. There's something eye-catching about it. More importantly, it's easy and sure to please the troops.
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Instant Pot Chicken Soup
Once you've made chicken soup from scratch, all other chicken soups pale in comparison. This recipe is my go-to. It's unfussy, with a thoroughly chicken-y broth that the boxed stuff can never approximate.
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Sweet and Sour Cabbage Soup
Contributor Micah Silva took her Ukrainian grandmother's sweet and sour cabbage soup, a family favorite, and made it vegetarian. It's imminently appealing and adaptable: make it in a slow cooker, add beans, or simmer a beef shank in the pot. It's a refreshing change of pace from the standard cabbage soup.
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Easy Carrot Soup
On nights when the fridge and cupboards are seemingly bare, you can likely pull off this pleasing soup. Serve it with crusty bread, or bake a loaf of quick soda bread to go with it.
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The Best Tomato Soup
Making your own tomato soup takes little time and reaps large rewards. You know you need to make a grilled cheese sandwich to serve with it.
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Chipotle Pumpkin Soup
Every year I drag home a little cooking pumpkin or two from the farmers market, and this is the ideal recipe for such impulse buys. You roast the halved pumpkin, scoop out the flesh, and season it with oregano, lime juice, and canned chipotles. It lets you enjoy a whole other side of pumpkin.
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Creamy Sweet Potato Soup
This nuanced soup offers a hint of nutmeg and cinnamon without tasting like a Thanksgiving casserole. You basically cook a bunch of chunked-up vegetables together and then blitz the heck out of them, to impressive results.
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Tom Yum
Thai dishes come from a balmy climate yet really hit the spot in temperate zones once the weather gets chilly. This soup is surprisingly fast to pull together and has bright flavors from lemongrass, ginger, fresh chiles, and lime. It's a cheater version for those of us in towns that don't carry hard-to-find ingredients like lime leaves.
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Cream of Mushroom Soup
Despite its name, this cream of mushroom soup isn't laden with heavy dairy. Its body comes from tons of mushrooms that you puree with only a touch of cream. It's quite easy and surprisingly elegant. I like to add a touch of miso to mine.
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Buffalo Chicken Chili
Why settle for regular chili when you can electrify it with Buffalo sauce? We offer directions for the slow cooker and Instant Pot as well.
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Black Bean Soup
This rich and satisfying black bean soup has chunks of sweet potato to liven it up. You can totally skip those if you don't have any around.
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Stuffed Pepper Soup
Stuffed pepper soup is a fixture of taverns and casual restaurants where I live. It's the sort of thing you'd never spy on a chain restaurant's menu, and it's so craveable. It's also super-easy to make at home. Don't tell—I prefer it to actual stuffed peppers.
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Chicken Pot Pie Soup
Fumbling with pastry is the blockade between many a chicken pot pie lover and the reality of it on the table. Here's a solution everyone will embrace: a creamy soup made from rotisserie chicken and veggies. Top with seasoned oyster crackers if you want to go all the way, though a quick bake of boxed biscuit mix would totally suffice, too.
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Hamburger Soup
Everyone here at Simply Recipes LOVES this quick and easy soup. It's so easy and crowd-pleasing. I grew up eating hamburger soup from Crock Pots at dozens of church potlucks. But this recipe is leagues better. A splash of red wine adds depth (we have an alcohol-free suggestion if you don't have wine on hand). And the big chunks of colorful vegetables aren't just an afterthought.
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Egg Drop Soup
You can bring this soup together in about 15 minutes. That's less time than it takes to jump in the car and pick up takeout.
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Easy Tuscan Bean Soup
Canned beans make this soup a breeze to assemble. It's the sort of soup you'd spot as Soup of the Day at a restaurant and want to order, but why not make a whole pot at home? Mash half of the beans to add body.
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Italian Wedding Soup
My aunt married into an Italian family and Italian wedding soup was one of her signature recipes. Guess what? This one is better (Sorry, Aunt G). It's quite flexible. Use whatever fresh greens you have on hand―escarole, chard, or spinach will do―and switch up the adorable acini de pepe for any small pasta you have in the cupboard.
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Mandu Guk (Korean Dumpling Soup)
Making dumplings is a fun social activity, but it's not very feasible on a weeknight. Keep a stash or frozen dumplings on hand and you can whip up this soulful Korean soup on the fly.
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Borscht
Beets. You love 'em or hate 'em. Borscht is perhaps the ultimate expression of beets in a recipe (according to...me). Takes on borsch abound all over Eastern Europe; some Ukrainian versions lack beets, in fact. This version clearly has them, as well as chunks of tender-simmered beef chuck. Serve it with rye bread.