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I really thought when I started this series, the temperatures would be changing. It is very much still Summer where I live, so I had to throw a soup in there for us.

Summer Vegetable Soup with Extra Virgin Olive Oil

There’s a version of vegetable soup that tastes like February — everything gray, everything soft, everything vaguely the same. This is not that soup.

This one is built for the middle of summer, when the garden is ahead of you, and the counter is crowded with zucchini you didn’t ask for. The vegetables go in late and come out still holding their shape. The broth stays clear and light. A good pour of extra virgin olive oil goes in at the end, off the heat, where it keeps its grassy, peppery bite instead of cooking away into nothing. And then lemon juice, right before serving, which is the step people skip and shouldn’t.

It comes in under 131 calories a bowl, which is almost beside the point until you realize how much you can eat of it.

Don’t overcook the vegetables. This is the whole thing. Every ingredient goes in according to how long it actually needs, not all at once. Potatoes and carrots are the slowpokes. Zucchini, peas, and corn need barely a few minutes. If you dump everything in at the start and simmer for forty minutes, you get sludge — tasty sludge, maybe, but sludge.

Use low-sodium vegetable broth. Regular broth is salt with a vegetable rumor attached, and it flattens everything. Low-sodium broth lets the corn taste sweet and the tomatoes taste like tomatoes, and it lets you decide how much salt the pot needs. Season at the end, taste, adjust.

Why olive oil twice

Once at the beginning, to soften the onion and garlic and build a base. Once at the end, raw, as a finish. The first pour does the cooking. The second pour does the flavor. Heat destroys the volatile compounds that make good extra virgin olive oil taste like anything, so if you use it only at the start, you’re essentially paying a premium for cooking fat. Drizzle a teaspoon or so over each bowl, and it turns into a different soup — rounder, richer, with that faint peppery catch at the back of the throat that tells you the oil is fresh. If you’ve got a nice bottle you’ve been saving, this is what it’s for.

Basil, both ways

Dried basil goes in during the simmer. It’s been through heat before, and it holds up; it gives the broth a low, herbal background note.

Fresh basil goes in at the very end, torn by hand, not chopped. Knives bruise it and turn the edges black. It’s there for the aroma more than the flavor — you want that hit when you lean over the bowl.

The Soup

Serves 8 | About 130 calories per serving

Ingredients

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus more for finishing
1 medium yellow onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium carrots, sliced into coins
2 medium potatoes, cut into ½-inch cubes
8 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
1 tsp dried basil
2 medium tomatoes, chopped (or 1 can diced, no salt added)
1 cup green beans, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 medium zucchini, halved lengthwise and sliced
1 cup corn kernels, fresh or frozen
1 cup peas, fresh or frozen
Juice of 1 lemon
½ cup fresh basil leaves, torn
Salt and black pepper to taste

Method

Warm the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until it turns translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and give it 30 seconds — just until you can smell it.
Add the carrots and potatoes and stir to coat in the oil.
Pour in the broth, add the dried basil, and bring to a gentle simmer. Cook 10 to 12 minutes, until the potatoes are nearly tender but still have some resistance when you poke one.
Add the tomatoes and green beans. Simmer 4 minutes.
Add the zucchini, corn, and peas. Simmer 3 to 4 minutes more. The zucchini should still be bright green with a little bite. Pull the pot off the heat here — the vegetables will keep cooking in the residual heat, so err on the side of underdone.
Stir in the lemon juice and the torn fresh basil. Season with salt and pepper, tasting as you go.
Ladle into bowls and finish each with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and a crack of black pepper.

A few notes

On the lemon. Add it off the heat. Acid is bright and volatile, and simmering it away wastes it. If the soup tastes flat when you go to season it, the answer is usually more lemon before it’s more salt.

On leftovers. It keeps for three or four days, but the vegetables soften as they sit. If you know you’re making it ahead, pull the pot a minute earlier than you think you should.

On what else to throw in. Summer squash, fresh spinach at the end, a handful of chopped celery with the carrots, a parmesan rind during the simmer if you’re not keeping it vegan. It’s a flexible soup. The structure holds.

Serve it warm, or let it sit until it’s barely above room temperature, which is honestly how it’s best in this heat of September.

Basically Tesha