A great high-fibre filler for dieters in cold weather - heat a bowl or microwave a mug whenever you're hungry. This is the sort of soup that gets promoted in Kickstart Diets or various Detox regimes (not that I'm a fan of either). But this soup is low in kilojoules/calories and high in veggies and fibre so it's a dieter's best friend.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon oil
1 leek, sliced (white part only) or use 1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic
1 carrot sliced
2 sticks celery sliced
1 zucchini (courgette), sliced
1/4 cabbage, shredded
440g can diced tomato
1 litre vegetable or chicken stock (ideally make your own)
2 cups water
2 tablespoons chopped parsley

Methods/steps

1. Heat oil in a large soup pot and cook leek and garlic over low heat for 3-5 minutes.

2. Prepare vegetables and add to pot with tomato, stock and water.

3. Bring to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour or until vegetables are tender. Add parsley.

4. Add more water if it's too thick.

Additional Tips

Variation:
Delete the stock and add a beef soup bone or lamb shank with the onions. Brown in the oil and continue with the recipe. This makes a good salt-free recipe if you need to cut out the salt.

Preparation time: 15 min Cooking time: 1 hr

Nutrition per serve:
Each cup contains 207 kJ ( 50 calories), 3g fat (including 0g saturated fat), 4g carbohydrate (including 4g sugars), 3g fibre and 54mg sodium.

Read our nutrition rating system.

Read how soup can help your diet efforts

Read one of my favourite published articles - why a bowl of soup has emerged as a fat-fighting food. Given soup's high water and fibre content, it's not surprising that soup has a high satiety (satisfaction value) yet is low in kilojoule-density. This means it only packs in few kilojoules/calories into a given volume. Interesting!