Soup is life. At least, soup is warmth and nourishment and memories and joy, a goodly dollop of life.
You may have noticed that I like soup. One of my earliest memories is asking for seconds on cream of chicken soup. Not so unusual in itself, but we were in an outdoor café in the Hague. My mother had enough maternal insight to let me have seconds.
My honeymoon of two weeks has many happy memories. The only food memory from it is my first taste of sopa del albondigas, a Mexican meatball soup, which I have yet to replicate.
Soup is so versatile, so cheering, so diverse, so useful that it seemed to me to deserve a life hack diary of its own.
- Almost any leftover can go into soup if you cut it up into soup-sized pieces.
Turnips do not belong in soup, unless you like the taste very much. Everything in the soup becomes turnipy. I have clearly had unfortunate experience with turnip in soups — lots of commenters below have more positive suggestions.
- As Robert Capon wrote, if a soup needs more liquid, don’t add water. Some good choices are broth, milk, or V-8.
- Cream actually does lovely things for soups. I only started using it when a Trader Joe’s in town stocked shelf-stable heavy cream.
- Quite a lot of vegetables can be incorporated into soups if you have reluctant vegetable eaters.
- Save the bones and skin from chicken in the freezer until you have enough for stock. Though it’s a fair bit of time cooking it doesn’t take much actual prep time and the result is delicious.
- If you have run out of your own stock, Campbell’s chicken broth is quite good as a replacement, though it doesn’t gel.
- Saturday night soup can receive almost all leftovers. My mother kept working space in the frig through this handy expedient, and many of them were delicious. Just don’t add turnips. Acccept that the best ones will never be repeated.
- Soups are forgiving and have great latitude, unlike popovers or soufflés. If you are shy about cooking, soups are a great place to begin.
- The Progresso canned soups are generally quite good if you are in a hurry or want a meal for one. Their chicken and cheese enchilada, for example, makes a good vehicle for leftover chicken.
- A stick blender is very useful. I do have some soups that don’t need one, but I realized that all of the ones below use it. Much easier than trying to transfer hot soup into a food processor.
- Hot Italian sausage skinned, cut up small, and browned makes nice meatballs for a minestrone.
- Soups make wonderful leftovers, and can be changed in the second pass by adding additional components or some other soup. We once added together bean soup and minestrone — it was delicious. Be bold.
I can’t resist sharing a few recipes, and I hope if you have favorites you’ll share them too.
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Cauliflower soup
Ingredients:
- 1 large head of cauliflower, about 1 kg, broken up.
- 2 onions, chopped
- 1 liter chicken broth (two 10 oz cans diluted Campbells is OK)
- 1/2 liter left over mashed potatoes (optional)
- 250 gm cheddar cheese, shredded
Sauté onions in a tablespoon of canola oil in a large pot. Add broth and bring to a boil. Add cauliflower and return to a boil. Simmer for 1/2 hour. Add mashed potatoes and return to boil. Turn off heat. Mix with a hand held electric blender until smooth. Mix in cheese. Salt to taste. Total cooking time 45 min. Serves 8-12. Broccoli or kale makes an excellent alternative to cauliflower.
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Fish soup
To make a broth from left over fish scraps and shrimp shells, sauté an onion and a few chopped celery stalks. Add fish scraps and shrimp shells. Cover with water and simmer at 170-180◦F for 1 hr. Do not boil. Strain broth and set aside.
The soup: Sweat an onion and several stalks of chopped celery in a little vegetable oil. Continue cooking on low heat, adding a few tablespoons of water if necessary until the celery is tender. Add two tablespoons of butter and mix with 4 tablespoons of flour. Mix and heat until the mixture bubbles. Add 1 quart of fish broth and heat until the mixture thickens. Add 2 tablespoons of tomato paste. Add 6 oz of diced leftover salmon. A can of salmon can be blended into a purée, which can replace the diced leftover salmon. Some finely cubed boiled potatoes are a nice addition. For gluten free version thicken with leftover mashed potatoes and/or corn starch. Season with some salt and tobasco sauce.
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Pea Soup
- 1 lb dried split peas
- 1 large onion diced
- 3 chopped carrots
- 3/4 lb smoked ham shank or similar
- 1 quart water
- 1 clove crushed garlic
Mix together and bring to a simmer. Continue cooking for 11/2-2 hr. Peas should be falling apart. Remove ham shank and slice off the meat. The soup can be left as it is or blended with a hand held mixer. Chop the meat into small pieces and add back to the soup. Discard the bone. Add salt to taste. A very tasty vegetarian version can be made by substituting jamon seasoning, a Mexican “ham” seasoning which is vegetarian in the version in our stores.
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French Country Potato Soup
Mince or shred (I used my food processor) one onion and several stalks of celery with the leaves. Simmer shredded vegetables over low heat until tender in 2 T butter but do not brown — you can cover with a lid as the liquid released is good in the soup. When these are nearly done, add herbs that have been pulverized with mortar and pestle with about one-quarter tsp of salt. I used some rosemary, thyme and soup herbs (these include sage, thyme, oregano, and rosemary).
In another pot, place ~three cups of chicken broth and about a cup and half of mashed potatoes (we save any extra — you can also use raw potato and cook it in the broth). Simmer potato in broth until fully cooked.
Using a mandolin with the finest blade or a vegetable grater, make threads of one carrot. Microwave the carrot threads for about a minute or until al dente.
Add about a third of the onion and celery to the potato and broth, and use a stick blender or whatever to blend soup until smooth. At this point you can thin with water or milk if the soup is thicker than you want.
Add the rest of the onion and celery and the carrot threads and simmer. Taste and adjust salt. Garnish with minced chives. As described this made the entree for two people; it could be a first course for four.
I had this soup first at the nearby student restaurant which is part of a hotel school. Their soups are always lovely. When I heard the name, I thought it sounded a bit pretentious and that potato soups are often a bit dull or heavy. I decided to trust them, and boy, was it good! I asked the student server, is there some thyme in this? She beamed at me, like a teacher proud of her student.
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And there are still the cold soups, and the ones based on the great white sauce…please share your soup hacks and recipes!