I’ve built many choices into the following recipes to give you the confidence (and permission, if you need it) to use whatever vegetables you have handy. In many ways, making substitutions when several ingredients are at play is less risky than it is with single-vegetable soups.
You start with a flavorful base and add the best produce you have on hand. Combining two or more vegetables creates a multidimensional broth that may not be quite the same the next time you make it — and that’s okay. Make a few of these and you’ll get a feel for how mixed vegetable soups are commonly treated in different cuisines and how simple it is to go from one continent to the next just by adjusting seasonings and ingredients.