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 When it’s cold outside, there’s something comforting about a steaming hot bowl of soup or stew. Soup is a generalized word that can mean many liquid based dishes including stews, chowders, broths, chilies or gumbos. There aren’t many special tools needed for soup making; a ladle, wooden spoon, and an 8-10 quart stockpot. (A 4 quart pot will suffice for small batches) Soups fall into just a few basic categories: 1. Clear soups are soups with an unadulterated stock; the lightest of these is consommé which is perfectly clear and usually garnished with meat or vegetables. 2. Purées are soups thickened naturally by blending or processing the ingredients. 3. Thickened soups are soups that have been thickened with roux, heavy cream, eggs or a partial purée.
Putting a definition to soup seems silly since for the most part, everyone knows what it is, but do you know the difference in bisque, consommé and gazpacho? Below is a list of different types of soups.
Bisque: A thick, rich soup usually consisting of pureed seafood and cream.
Billy bi: A French soup made with mussels, onions, wine, cream and seasonings.
Borscht: A soup from Russia made with fresh beets, vegetables, and sometimes with meat and/or meat stock, usually garnished with sour cream and served hot or cold.
Bouillabaisse: A French seafood stew made of fish, shellfish, onions, tomatoes, white wine, olive oil, garlic, saffron and herbs.
Bouillon: A broth made from cooking vegetables, poultry, meat or fish in water.
Bourride: A Mediterranean fish soup with garlic, onions, orange peel, and sometimes saffron, thickened with egg yolks and flavored with aioli.
Broth: A liquid resulting from cooking vegetables, meat or fish in water; same as "bouillon."
Brunswick stew: A squirrel meat and onion stew originating in Brunswick County, Virginia. Modern versions substitute chicken or rabbit for the squirrel and may also add other vegetables such as okra, lima beans, tomatoes and corn.
Callaloo: A Caribbean soup made with callaloo leaves, coconut milk, okra, yams and chilies.
Chowder: Thick, chunky seafood or other rich soup containing chunks of food.
Cioppino: A rich Italian fish stew made with tomatoes and a variety of fish and shellfish, usually very spicy.
Consommé: Clarified meat or fish broth. This must be perfectly clear
Court-Bouillon: A broth made from cooking various vegetables and herbs, usually an onion studded with a few whole cloves, celery, carrots, parsley, thyme and bay leaf, maybe with a little wine, lemon juice or vinegar; this is used as a poaching liquid for fish, seafood or vegetables.
Fumet: A concentrated stock made from fish or mushrooms, used to add flavor to less intensely-flavored stocks or sauces.
Gazpacho: An uncooked soup made of a pureed mixture of fresh tomatoes, sweet bell peppers, onions, celery, cucumber, bread crumbs, garlic, olive oil, vinegar and sometimes lemon juice which is served cold.
Menudo: A hearty, spicy Mexican soup made with tripe which is the lining of a cow or calf’s stomach, calf's feet, chilies, hominy and seasonings supposedly a great hangover cure.
Minestrone: A thick Italian vegetable soup usually containing pasta along with peas or beans and other vegetables.
Mulligan Stew: A stew made of any ingredient on hand including meat, potatoes and vegetables in any combination.
Mulligatawny: A rich meat or vegetable broth highly seasoned with curry and other spices with bits of poultry or other meats and can include rice, eggs, coconut shreds and cream; originally from India.
Irish Stew: A stew made of lamb or mutton chops, potatoes and onions, covered with water or broth and stewed for several hours.
Pepper Pot: A thick soup of tripe, meat, vegetables, pepper and seasonings.
Posole: a Mexican thick, hearty soup made of pork or chicken and broth, hominy, onion, garlic, dried chilies and cilantro and served with lettuce, radishes, onions, cheese and cilantro.
Scotch Broth: A Scottish soup made with lamb, barley and various vegetables.
Soup: Any combination of vegetables, fruit, meat, and/or fish cooked in a liquid.
Stew: a dish containing meat, vegetables and a thick soup-like broth made from a combination of the stewing liquid and the natural juices of the food being stewed.
Stock: strained liquid that is the result of cooking vegetables, meat or fish and other seasonings in water.
Vichyssoise: a rich, creamy potato and leek soup garnished with chives and served cold.
Won Ton: A Chinese favorite made of won tons cooked in and served in a clear broth flavored with various ingredients such as scallions, celery and soy sauce.
To make a great soup, you must start with a great stock. The difference between broth and stock is that stock is made from bones and broth is made from pieces of meat. The cartilage in the joints breaks down and releases collagen which adds a gelatinous texture when cold which in turn gives the liquid a fuller flavor. Stock can be frozen for up to three months. Freezing stocks in ice trays is a good idea because it is easy to use and the smaller pieces thaw quickly. If the stock is left in the refrigerator, it will deteriorate quickly and go rancid in about 3 days. There are several things to remember when making stock. First, always start with cold water. Second, never use salt, using salt will seal the meat and not allow the flavors to extract during cooking, also if the stock has salt in it and is reduced for a sauce, it will turn out very salty. Third never boil your stock; boiling will reincorporate the albumen that you are trying to remove by skimming, thus resulting in a cloudy stock. The best results come from a ratio of about 2 pounds of bones to 1 gallon of water. Lastly, when adding vegetables, leave them unpeeled and leave all leaves and stalks intact, this will provide the most flavor. Although there are many recipes for stock, they are all prepared the same way with much the same ingredients. Whether it is beef stock, chicken stock, turkey stock, vegetable stock or fish stock, make them all the same, just substituting different bones or meats. Roasted stocks should have the bones and vegetables browned before starting and some tomato paste can be added for extra richness.
Some soups need thickeners added for the appropriate consistency; one way to thicken a soup is with a roux which is an equal mixture of fat (usually butter) and flour that are cooked together. These are prevalent in Cajun cooking. Another thickener is vegetable starch. Potato and corn soup will thicken themselves as they extrude their natural starches. Okra acts as a thickener in gumbo, file (fee-lay) powder is another thickener in gumbo which is dried and ground sassafras leaves. Other soups such as pea or bean soup can be pureed to release the natural starches. Cornstarch and arrowroot are starches in powder form which need to be mixed with a liquid to dissolve or they will hit the liquid and cook like dumplings.
Mirepoix is a French term for a mixture of diced onion, celery, and carrot, which is a base for many soups. When adding these aromatic vegetables, it is best to “sweat” them in butter. Sweating is different from sautéing in that sautéing is done in a hot pan to brown whereas sweating is started in a warm pan with butter and cooked slowly to release the flavors and aromas. This is a common starting point for many soups; after the vegetables are sweated, other ingredients are added and then covered by stock and simmered for the appropriate amount of time.
When using dried beans, soak them overnight in water to reconstitute them. If you want to do it faster, boil them for 1 hour at a rolling boil. Dried beans produce the best results for soup, canned are okay, but only in a pinch. Use the best ingredients you can find, remember, your dish is only as good as the ingredients that are used. Soups can be made a day in advance, in fact, many soups taste better the next day after all of the ingredients “marry” overnight in the refrigerator.
These are some of our favorite soups:
Click here to see our complete collection of soup recipes. |