Soup 101: How To Make Delicious Recipes From Scratch
How To Make Soup
Here's the secret to soupmaking: it's really, really easy. Much easier than you think! You could probably make a great soup right now with things you have in your kitchen. Really— if there is one culinary skill you can master, even if you don't know a chef's knife from a santoku, it's making a soup.
The benefits of making a soup at home go far beyond the personal pride of a job well done, too. Using fresh herbs, vegetables, and meats will get you a better tasting, healthier dish than a premade soup. Slow cooking in a broth is also one of the best ways to preserve every single nutrient found in your ingredients.
Soup Ingredients
What should you put in a soup? Basically, whatever you like and know goes together. There are some obvious no-gos: it'll be hard to make a chocolate and salmon soup taste good. However, you can be reasonably confident that you can make broccoli, carrots, and chicken taste pretty good together, even without a whole lot of culinary knowledge.
That doesn't narrow it down too much, so if you're looking for something to start with, here's four things you can combine and reliably get a solid soup:
Hearty vegetables— carrots, celery, onions, garlic, corn
Complete proteins — chicken, chopped beef, mushrooms, tofu
Healthy starch — sweet potatoes, rice, noodles, beans
Leafy greens— kale, spinach, bok choy
Fresh herbs - basil, parsley, cilantro, sage, thyme
This is not to say you should only have one of the above, though. You'll get the best results, both for flavor and your health, by combining many ingredients from these categories. From a health perspective, you want to encourage diverse gut flora by having as many different types of vegetable as possible in each bite.
Herbs and Spices
Herbs and spices are the best way to add brightness and complexity to a recipe. Adding some fresh rosemary or parsley from the garden and a couple bay leaves will instantly elevate your soup game and have everyone asking for your recipe. Fresh herbs are often the preferred method, but dried and ground herbs have the advantage of convenience— you need less of a dried herb to make an impact, and they can be stored for much longer. Either one will work, it's just a matter of what is on hand and how many things you feel like chopping.
Salt and pepper are essential for every soup, but even those have some options. Sea salt or Himalayan salt, black pepper or white pepper, maybe even add some crushed red pepper flakes for a little kick. Simple additions like turmeric, cumin, paprika, allspice, or clove will change the entire feel of your soup and give hints of Indian, Mexican, or Asian cuisine without changing the vegetables and meats used in a recipe.
Broths
Not all broths are equal. In an ideal world, you would be able to make and stockpile your own broths: vegetable, chicken, beef, turkey, etc. However, regularly having an entire day to simmer and skim broths on the stove is a luxury we don't all have. So, it's fine to use a store-bought broth. We always look for organic, low-sodium broth. Low-sodium is crucial, because it allows you to control the amount, and kind, of salt that is used. If your broth is too salty, it impacts your ability to properly season other ingredients like beef and potatoes. It's hard to counteract too much salt, but always easy to add more at any point in the cooking process.
Here is a recipe from a soup that I made this evening. We threw together ingredients we had in the fridge and it was truly an exceptional tasting soup that was great for detoxing the liver, building the immune system, encouraging heart health and digestive health, and reducing inflammation. Kelly said that she could eat this soup every night for dinner and be completely satisfied.
Recipe:
1 large onion, roughly chopped
1 bulb garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
4 stalks of celery
2 cups broccoli florets
1 large sweet potato
1 cup baby bella mushrooms, quartered
2-3 chicken breasts, approx 1-1.5 pounds
2-3 cups spinach
32 oz low-sodium chicken broth
Salt, pepper, paprika, chili powder, cumin, ground mustard, cinnamon— all added to taste
Basic Soup Recipe
Start with the ingredients that cook the longest: As was mentioned in our chili recipe, onions can be cooked for almost forever, it's just a matter of if you're going for a bit of a crunch, or the texture of French onion soup. After that, you have broccoli, which needs the next longest time to lock in flavors, celery, and garlic. Let these things cook in the bottom of the pot until they are hot and changing in texture and color, generally around 10-15 minutes. Make sure you salt your vegetables as they go into the pot. Each vegetable will absorb some salt and this will add depth to the flavor, making each element of the soup distinct.
Layer in new ingredients and spices: Don't just dump everything into the pot at once. Your spices will burn, and vegetables will be unevenly cooked. After you cook onions, garlic, celery, and broccoli, add the mushrooms. If you are adding multiple spices, shake in one or two with each new vegetable.
Cook some things separately: Potatoes will either fall apart or be undercooked if you cook them with your other vegetables. The same goes for meats and poultry, but with the added risk of foodborne illness. Rather than trying to time things right, cook them in a separate pan, or with a different method entirely. Roasting potatoes will make them absolutely delicious and texturally perfect. We cooked our chicken in an Instant Pot, then broke it apart with forks before adding it to the main pot. For beef, sear it in the pot before any other ingredients, and then remove it from the pot and cook everything else in the beef fat for an extremely rich flavor.
Add broth once your vegetables are cooked: In most cases, you want vegetables to be cooked before you add your broth. Aggressive boiling will dull a lot of your flavors, so we don't do it. Add your broth, bring it to a boil for 2-3 minutes to bring it up to a good temperature, and then lightly simmer until it's ready to serve.
Simmer, add ingredients, simmer more: Remember the potatoes and chicken you didn't cook with the veggies? Add them in while the soup is simmering, and let them sit for a while. You should simmer all ingredients together for as long as possible. 15-20 minutes is a bare minimum, but an hour or so will be great if you can swing it.
Make Enough For Tomorrow: Soup is a process, and so you shouldn't go through all of that for one meal. Make a huge pot of soup and put some away in the fridge for tomorrow or the freezer for next month. As an added bonus, your flavors will settle overnight, and it is guaranteed that it will taste better the next day.
The Best Part of Homemade Soup
Homemade soups are great because they are a simple way to use up a lot of ingredients and produce a ton of vibrantly healthy food that will last at least two or three meals. Regularly making soup will help you reduce food waste in the kitchen— if you have some leftover carrots from another recipe, toss them in whatever you're cooking. Making Friday night soup night will allow you to use up everything from earlier in a way that creates a satisfying dinner, as well as a quick lunch for the weekend.
Making soups is a great way to expand your horizons as a cook. While dishes like Chilean sea bass have razor-thin margins of error, a slow-cooked soup has a lot of room for experimentation and plenty of time for course correction. Each step of the soupmaking process takes a little bit of time, giving you a chance to taste the dish and add more of your herbs and spices, or add another element to counteract something that is maybe a little too prevalent.
So, get some broth, grab some veggies, and get cooking!
