IN THE cold, drab days of winter a bowl of home-made soup is guaranteed to lift the spirits. The best soups at this time of year are the hearty ones which fill you with an inner glow or "stick to your ribs", as your granny might have said.

Really thick versions, served with a big chunk of bread, can provide a complete meal in a bowl. This is also a dish which is cheap to make, since a cunning cook can rustle up a delicious broth using left-over ingredients.

And best of all, although we seem to have forgotten it, most home-made soups are incredibly simple to prepare - and the results will be much more enticing than the offerings from a tin.

Orlando Murrin, editor of BBC Good Food Magazine, is a fan of soup and says: ''I think it's a very nice thing to make. It is a very basic form of cooking - if you have a saucepan and a knife and some ingredients, then you can make soup. If you own a liquidiser as well, this allows you to make it into a much nicer, soupy soup.''

Some people, however, are put off making their own soup because they are worried about making stock. So many recipe books disdain cubes and demand that hours are spent boiling chicken bones or vegetables before the cooking proper gets underway.

For cooks who have the time and the inclination to do this, fine - great results are all but guaranteed. But those who don't want to make stock can still make successful soups.

There are some tips for cheating. For starters, food writer Nigella Lawson, in her down-to-earth book How To Eat, advises choosing your soup carefully.

She says: ''No consomme or delicate broth should be made with anything but home-made stock - but a hearty vegetable soup can, frankly, be made with water. In between these two extremes, use stock cubes.''

The second tip is to select your pre-prepared stock with care. Murrin, whose magazine has carried out tests in this area, claims fresh or frozen stocks sold in tubs by supermarkets are mostly ''weak and tasteless''. He also says cubes and jars often yield ''very salty and not particularly pleasant'' results.

However, he says there are two good quick-stock solutions: ''One thing you can do is use tinned beef consomme, which has been diluted, as stock. That is what the Americans often use and it is very good.

"Alternatively, Marigold vegetable stock powder, which comes in tubs, is fine and not too salty. You just add a teaspoon to water and that seems to make the best vegetable stock.''

When it comes to making soup, the secret is to avoid throwing in too many strongly-flavoured and conflicting ingredients as the end result will be confused. Classic soups like tomato, chicken or pea and ham illustrate the point that less is more in this case.

If you taste your soup at the end and discover it is a little bland, there are lots off tricks for boosting the flavour. Soups made from tomatoes, leeks, parsnips or any vegetable which has a hint of sweetness often benefit from having a small pinch of sugar added to them. If it lacks punch, try adding just a drop of lemon, soya sauce or Worcester sauce. Popping some fresh herbs or a blob of creme fraiche into a soup just before serving can work wonders too.

Many concoctions also taste better when sherry is added and Murrin says: ''You can add up to quarter of a pint or 150ml of dry sherry to all types of soup at the end. You can really put in an extraordinary amount, far more than you would think and it gives lovely results.''

Alternatively, you could stick to tried and tested recipes. In the panel below is a suggestion for a warming winter soup taken from Jamie Oliver's book, The Naked Chef.