Let’s think about soups and stews.
Soups to me are the perfect meal, because they fill you up, they’re one dish, they’re almost always savory and delicious. You’ve got all the good flavors of a whole dinner in one big bowl.
I decided I wanted to become good at making soup, so I make an effort to experiment. And even though it seems like soup is something that you really want in the winter, I eat it once a week year-round. Soup makes me feel satisfied and happy, it’s something that I could dip bread in. Ahhh, the perfect meal.
I have really worked hard over the years to become an excellent soup maker. I think about types of soup like this: You’ve got a meat-based soup, or you have a vegetable-based soup. Then you have a creamy soup or you have a broth-base soup. And then I throw in chili, beef burgundy, and stew in those categories, because you’re eating with a spoon, and it’s one big bowl.
For some ideas to have fun with soup, let’s talk first about vegetables. You can make a beautiful butternut squash soup for example. You can make vegetable based soup without any sort of dairy or any fat. You can sauté the vegetables in coconut oil and use vegetable stock to be Vegan. You can add ginger or spices to jazz it up. You can use soup to be a dietary form of eating vegetables that are quite filling and good. You can use a vegetable-based stock with broccoli and make broccoli soup, and use different things like instant mashed potatoes, rice or different starches to thicken them up, rather than using cream and butter and cheese. All versions can be equally satisfying.
These are what I make as far as vegetable soups go. I make broccoli soup, butternut squash soup, tomato soup. French onion and cream of mushroom. Those are usually in my vegetable repertoire. You can also make good old vegetable soup with some fun summer vegetables. (Use some tomato juice with your stock, it adds in the richness you need with no meat added.) You can make cauliflower soup. I’ve only made it once. So, boring.
Let’s not forget the starches, potato soup and corn chowder. (I don’t think you can eat either of those two without bacon.) Oh, yes. Let’s talk about corn chowder. You can do that with more of a Mexican tinge with some green chilies and some cheese. Tip: Spicy Jack cheese, which is really good to throw in any cheesy soup, because it adds just pinch of spice, so that it seems like it’s got a really good depth of flavor in it.
Then we’ve got bean soups. Mm, mm, mm. We have navy bean soup. We’ve got that five-bean soup that you can make with a ham hock. You can make lentil soup. You can make split pea soup, and I love split pea soup.
There is one thing that I do differently. I hate creepy pieces of meat with all the flavor and texture sucked out of them. Maybe a hidden piece of skin, fat or small bones. Yuck. For that reason, let’s take a ham hock for example, I cook separate and make a stock that I can strain. No, I am not throwing all the good stuff away. It’s done its work and we used it up!
I take some chicken or vegetable stock, some mirepoix, bay leaves and all my fresh herbs and the ham hock and cook in the crock pot (on low for 6-8 hours. – never boil only simmer!). Now I have a perfectly seasoned “ham” stock without all the mystery stuff floating around my bowl.
Turning that into Split-pea soup, I sauté up fresh mirepoix, add the strained stock, add split peas, simmer until peas are done, and at the last minute I add fresh chopped ham. Why? So, I can taste a delicious taste of ham with every bite that hasn’t been cooked to death. The split peas have been permeated by the delicious stock with all its hammy smokiness and herbs. Beautiful!
Soups are easy dinners.
I think that with a majority of them they all start out the same. I always start with the mirepoix, the mixture of onions, celery and carrots. (Of course, French onion soup is just onions and a little bit of garlic and some herbs and stuff). What we’re getting is really good flavor base for the soup with the different kinds of vegetables in there.
I sauté the mirepoix, with a little garlic and a pinch of red pepper chili flake. I add bay leaves and the appropriate herbs and spices. And that is my starter for most of my soups. That includes the butternut squash soup, broccoli cheese soup, mushroom soup and tomato soup. We are blending them when they are done so all the vegetables and herbs are not noticeable.
And then there’s broth/meat-based soups.
If we want to go with the chicken route, we have chicken noodle soup for example. You could put tortellini’s in a soup and make more of an Italian kind of soup. You can take the chicken and also make a chicken tortilla soup. And then there’s a beautiful soup I make called chicken enchilada soup, (embarrassingly easy – recipe soon). You have different cuisine influences that have soups, like egg-drop soup.
And then beef soups, you can make stew, you can make Albondigas soup, which is a Mexican meatball soup. You can make a vegetable beef soup. Lastly, the fish based bisques and chowders. I once made a lobster bisque that took two days, three straining’s and two times in the blender. Now I just buy from a restaurant when I want it. Some soups I can’t master and I’m OK with it.
I haven’t gotten into any kind of cold soup. That’s not my thing. But anyway, I encourage you to get your family to eat soup and start experimenting. Don’t be afraid to eat them in the warm months, because they are still good. If you like hot food, it’s hot. It’s summer, it’s OK.
Happy soup-ing!