‘Tis the season to make soups

I spend a lot of time making soup, especially when the whether gets a little colder.  Make a big pot of soup on Sunday and you have lunch for the rest of the week, and it’s a nourishing, satisfying lunch at that.  During the summer, a salad often seems like the best possible lunch, but a salad just doesn’t seem to cut it when it’s cold and the wind is blowing yesterday’s snow around.

Over the years, I’ve developed a pretty broad repertoire of soups but they fall into a couple of different categories.  There are chunky soups, which sometimes but not always contained a meat or fish.  Then there are the “smooth” soups that are invariably vegetable.  I put the word “smooth” in parentheses because I often use the coarsest possible setting when blending or pureeing but for the purposes of categorization, smooth works.  There are exceptions like clear soups and gazpachos, but I don’t make them very often in the winter.

Both the chunky and the smooth can be constructed through some standard, repeatable techniques and in today’s post, I want to talk about those techniques and some other basic considerations, not the recipes themselves.  I share a couple of dynamite recipes in a couple of days.

The basic technique of putting together either a chunky or a smooth soup is really simple.  First, sauté a flavor base.  This means cooking finely chopped aromatics in butter, olive oil, or vegetable oil.  What’s an aromatic?  Aromatics are onions, peppers, carrots, celery, fennel, garlic, and other vegetables that fill out the foundation of soup or a sauce.  Nearly every single soup I make starts with at least chopped onions sautéed for 6-10 minutes.  Depending on what I’m making and what’s available, other stuff can go in the pot at this point.  If I’m making a big, robust beef stew, I might add celery and carrots.  If I’m making something Mediterranean or Mexican, peppers and garlic are going in.  The key is to make sure the vegetables are chopped into small pieces and are cooked long enough to get soft but not at a heat so high as to scorch.

After sautéing the aromatics comes most of the rest of the stuff.  This could include beef (as long as you have seared it first), chicken, larger vegetables (like root vegetables, green beans, broccoli, etc.), beans, or tomatoes.  It also means the first application of herbs and spices.  A bouquet garni (herbs wrapped in cheesecloth) of thyme, parsley, garlic, a bay leaf, and whole peppercorns will add a new dimension to your soup.  So will a healthy dose of five spice powder, paprika, or Old Bay Seasoning.  This is where you get to be creative.

The next step, adding the liquid, requires a bit of a detour.  First, it’s a bit of a judgment call. If you are using tomatoes in your soup, you’ll probably add less liquid than if you’re making a carrot soup or a vegetable stew. Second is to determine what liquid you’re adding.  Every single cookbook I have ever read since the beginning of time urges home cooks to not buy broth in the grocery store but to make their own stock.  Every one, without fail. Well, I’m here to tell you that I have never had enough beef bones on hand to make a credible beef stock and I’ve made exactly one chicken stock in my culinary past.  Fish stock I make every once in a while because I buy a lot of whole fish but the others?  Forget it.  And I’ve lived to tell about it.

I do buy my stock but I don’t buy the blue boxes of pre-made stock that are usually available on grocery shelves.  They are a little bland and they can be a little over-salty, but that’s not the reason.  Most of the prepackaged stocks are made from a concentrate with some other stuff added, but you can actually buy the concentrate at the grocery store, control the amount of stock you’re making/using for each recipe, and not have to worry about a partly-used box of stock going bad.  It turns out to be cheaper, too.  Look for a jar of concentrate instead of a box of stock and you’ll be fine.  And, by the way, in many cases water will work just as well a commercial stock.

There are other liquids that can be used instead of or in combination with stock/water.  With beef stews and pot roasts, I’ll often use a hearty beer or ale for flavoring.  Many beef or lamb recipes also call for red wine, and I’ll often add some white wine to fish soups and stews. I’ve also had occasion to use tomato juice as a liquid.  In any event, these additional liquids add some flavor depth and often a little acidity.

At this point, you usually bring everything to a boil, cover the pot, reduce the heat to low, and walk away for a while to let the flavors develop.  Go read a book, work on your taxes, buy some Christmas presents, watch an episode of a Netflix show, or something.  Just go away and let things be.

When you come back, there are only two more steps but the chunk step is different than the smooth step.  If you are making a chunky soup, add any ingredients that are either pre-cooked or cook quickly.  This could include sausage or other meats that you cooked separately, but it would also include most fish, any fast cooking greens like spinach or kale, or any frozen vegetables you might want to add like peas or artichoke hearts.  Let these come to temperature and cook as long as they need to (usually no more than 5 to 10 minutes) and you’re ready for the last step – seasoning.

Seasoning is the most subjective part of the whole process.  This is your last chance to control your soup’s flavor and where you can adjust salt, pepper, heat, acid, and so on.  Take a taste and think of what might be missing.  Add things in small amounts (you can’t take salt out once it’s added) until you’re satisfied.  Small amounts of vinegar or lemon juice will be undetectable on their own but will add brightness and edge to your soup.  Salt is almost always needed to bring out the flavors of your soup and if you’re a fan of big flavors, so is black pepper.  Depending on your palate and those for whom you’re cooking, a pinch or two of red pepper flakes might be just what the doctor ordered.  So pinch and taste and dash until you have things just the way you want them and you’re ready to serve.

For smooth soups, there usually aren’t any last minute additions but we do have to make the soup smooth.  For this, as often as I can I turn to my food mill, NOT my food processor or blender.  I do use a mini-food processor a lot for sauces, but I’ve grown to love my food mill.  Blenders and food processors are noisy, require a lot of set up, and are hard to clean.  The food mill can usually be cleaned without the dishwasher, can be set up in seconds, and is silent.  It can also produce a near total liquid soup or a “smooth” soup with nice, thick texture.  I highly recommend them.

So at this step, set up the food mill with the desired grater disc over a clean bowl near the soup pot.  Transfer the soup to the mill and go to town.  Periodically scrape the bottom of the disc.  When you’re done and the soup has been pureed, transfer it back to the soup pot for any last minute seasoning (like salt, pepper, vinegar, etc.).  When you’ve got it tasting the way you think it should, you’re ready to serve.

There is one last step for both chunky soups and smooth soups that adds a little grace note.  It’s optional (especially for chunky soups) and that’s the garnish.  A shrinking of chopped fresh herbs, a dollop of sour cream, some crumbled bacon, chopped toasted almonds or peanuts, or croutons can add some interest and a little texture to your lunch, but I’ll often skip the garnish to dig right in to the soup I’ve just created.