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School me in soup making.
Casually Hardcore
Once an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered User regular
Once an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered User regular
I want to make good soup.
Everytime I go to a Restaurant, I eat these delicious tasting soup and I identify what I'm tasting and everything.
I go home, try to mimic it, and all I make is a bowel of watery tasting mush.
How do I soup?
Everytime I go to a Restaurant, I eat these delicious tasting soup and I identify what I'm tasting and everything.
I go home, try to mimic it, and all I make is a bowel of watery tasting mush.
How do I soup?
Casually Hardcore on
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The base for most soups i make is just glaze some chopped unions in butter in a big pots. Then if you're making a clear soup: add veggies, fry and stir a bit, add stock. Ready.
If you're making a soup that'll be blended: also fry a chopped potato or 2, add your veggies, add stock and blend.
Season after tasting.
Let veggies boil in stock for 10/15 minutes so they don't get overly mushy.
let soup cool down before putting in closed containers.
How does your approach differ from this?
Soup is something thats generally done in stages. Thats probably why you are getting something mushy and gross at the end. My mother makes some excellent soups, and the first step is usually making a big ol batch of stock on a cold winter day, then the next day making some soup.
Lucky for you, alton brown exists:
edit: whoops, linked the wrong one.
I actually find soup to be great for experimentation, as well as being fairly cheap and easy. If anything it's just a bit time consuming. I don't even own a slow cooker and I've come up with some great stuff!
Typically though, I don't set out to just make soup, it is usually a byproduct of a previous meal. Left over bones/animal carcasses are excellent for making stock, and its easy, you just need to be able to spend time watching it.
Leftover roast chicken soup is excellent:
http://articles.boston.com/2009-03-25/lifestyle/29258399_1_soup-chicken-teaspoon-paprika
Not incredible, but certainly tasty and simple to make.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
Fill your largest pot with a mix of 50% onions, 25% carrots and 25% celery by weight. Just rough chop it or use scraps. This is mirepoix and it makes a huge difference. I would use 1# of mirepoix for one gallon of stock.
Next, add your chicken carcass. You can roast the bones first for added flavor, but when I'm feeling lazy, I just throw in a frozen one. I would do one carcass per gallon of stock. Next, add a few peppercorns, a bay leaf or two and maybe a bit of thyme, but be careful! That shit tastes muddy if you add too much. I usually toss in some parsley stems too, but only if I have them on hand. Don't worry if you can't.
Fill the pot with enough water to cover everything and turn the heat on low. Let it go all day. Literally, for hours. Check it every once and a while to make sure it isn't boiling and remove any scum you see building up on the surface. If the water level is dropping alot, don't be afraid to add more water. Do not let the water boil! A little bubbling is fine, but no boiling. When the chicken carcass falls apart and all of the cartilage has melted away, you should be left with a golden delicious stock with the delicious flavor of chicken. Strain the stock through a fine sieve and store for later or use immediately.
The next tip I can give is salt. Usually, if something tastes bland, you didn't add enough salt. People are usually afraid of salt for some reason. Salt is your friend. He wants to help you. Do not salt your stock. Just salt your soup. I recommend adding salt at each stage of the soup making process. If you are sauteing some veggies, add a pinch of salt. If you're cooking off meat to add to the soup, season the meat. If you're going to be cooking any rice in the soup, add some salt to the soup before adding the rice. This will impregnate your rice with salt. And yumminess. And don't forget salt's sassy friend pepper. She wants to join the party too. Whenever you add salt, add a few cracks or sprinkles of pepper. It makes all the difference. And finally, before you declare your soup finished, taste it. If it isn't up to snuff, fix it. Adjust the seasoning. Add a bit more salt and pepper if needed or some fresh herbage. A touch of cream is always good too!
Happy cooking!
A pinch of chilli flakes (or even less) as it adds a nice warming sensation which is what you want with soup.
Burn everything. (well not really, but kinda) that golden brown stuff that happens on the bottom of your pan is solid gold that turns into liquid gold once you deglaze the pot. It is called fond. Fond is Good. Remember this. I usually get my fond on with onions, leeks or some smoked ham hock.
Don't stick cream in it. But Blake! You say, cream is delicious. And I say, cream is Ok at best. stick it's younger, hotter cousin in it, creme fresh. She will do stuff for you that cream never would.
Satans..... hints.....
Basic Chicken Noodle Soup.
Or, take your stock, add some noodles, and while it's very hot (still on the stove), crack an egg and whip that around in there:
Egg-Drop Soup!
Serve with a base of white rice, the meat and vegetables on top, with about a cup of the broth over the rice and veggies. top with the over-easy egg.
It's delicious, and only takes about a half hour. If you have longer, go with Demurist's idea, though making that amount of broth is generally expensive for the amount of soup tolerance most folk have.
As for ingredients, once I've fished out the bones as well as the chunks of carrots onions or celery which I've used to make the stock, I go right ahead and add some fresh carrots, onions and celery back in. The carrots, onions and celery which you've used to make the stock have had a lot of the flavor leached out of them, whereas the taste of fresh veggies will still pop. For chicken noodle soup, I'll throw in some cubes of potato, which I've half-baked either in the microwave or the oven to start softening them. I'll also add in the chicken which I harvested off the stock carcass and a box of dried noodles (I'm personally partial to bowties). Towards the end of the process, I'll add a bag of thawed frozen peas (adding peas too early can leech too much of the moisture or flavor out of them, and at a certain temperature the moisture can start to leech out as well and leave your peas shriveled and tough), and I'll stir in a swirl of heavy cream right before removing it from the heat.
For vegetable beef soup, you want to use a beef stock instead (using beef bones, hopefully bones that were previously associated with a joint so you get that connective tissue which melts into the stock). Assuming your stock is made, season and pan sear your beef before adding it to the broth. I'll use many of the same vegetables as well as corn and green beans (EDIT: AND STEWED TOMATOES! How could I forget the tomatoes?!) while making the soup, some rosemary, chili powder and garlic gets added to the other spices, and rather than adding cream at the end I add a bottle of a dark ale or porter in the beginning.
This is hardly true at all. Have you never heard of sous vide? You do not need to simmer water for it to be hot enough to kill bacteria. People say bring up to simmer as it's the easiest visual way of ensuring minimum heat.
Satans..... hints.....
http://www.foodnetwork.ca/recipes/Soup/Pork/recipe.html?dishid=7962
Xbox Gamertag: GAMB1NO325Xi
That's essentially what I meant by "you definitely want to get it to the level where it starts simmering [because] on heat to low, you're not making stock so much as culturing bacteria." Also, you're ensuring that the stock is reaching a temperature sufficient to melt all the connective tissues in the carcass.
Incidentally, I have heard of sous-vide, and while it's a great method for pasteurizing discrete quantities of meat, it's probably unwise to consider that akin to making stock if you want to make it in bulk and store it for any period of time. Low temperature/long duration can kill virtually all kinds of bacteria, but it won't destroy spores, which are produced by certain kinds of bacteria and will become active as temperatures fall unless chilled quickly. And because water has a very high specific heat, it's difficult for the home chef to bring down the temperature of a large quantity of water quickly enough that spores won't activate.
Thank you all!
Question:
How do I accumulate enough chicken carcass for stock making? I'm only one person and I honestly can't eat chicken constantly.
We basically use this
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/chicken-stock-recipe/index.html
But with like one chicken and left overs, or two chickens. I dont know why Ina Garten thinks normal people have a pot that can fit three chickens but no one does.
Anyways, we do that, make a big batch and freeze what we dont need. Holds up great for a few months.
If you don't find yourself in possession of a chicken carcass very often, you can just use bullion cubes or a carton of chicken stock. They make them in reduced-salt varieties as well, because sometimes they can be almost like brine.
You probably won't notice a huge difference not making it yourself, and it saves a lot of time.
Pfffft....this shit I made is like a million times better then any store brought stock I ever brought. It's like they dipped a carton in the dead sea and wrote 'chicken broth' on it.
1 medium onion - diced
2 stalks celery - sliced thin
1 tablespoon vegetable or olive oil
4 yukon gold potatoes or red potatoes cut into bit size chunks
1 8 oz bottle of clam juice
water
bay leaf
1 or 2 cans chopped clams
kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper
Sweat the onion and celery in a tablespoon of oil and a pinch of salt on medium low heat in a heavy bottomed pot until the onion is translucent, about 5-7 minutes. Add the potatoes, clam juice, bay leaf and add water until the potatoes are submerged, about 4 cups depending on the size of the potatoes and your pot. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer for about 20 minutes or until the potatoes are done, test them by sticking one with a fork. If the potato falls off or splits in half, it's cooked. Bring the heat down to low, remove the bay leaf and add the chopped clams. If you really like clams use 2 cans. I usually use Snows brand, because it's readily available, but if you have access to fresh stuff from a fish monger, even better. Let the clams cook on low for 5 minutes, then season with salt and pepper. It's probably going to take a good bit of salt, because the broth is basically water and clam juice.
The whole chowder comes together in about 30 minutes, it's quick and easy and so good. I add sliced carrots to the celery and onion, because I like the color and they taste good.
My wife and I have this frequently, with a hunk of crusty bread and a good cheddar cheese. It's got a delicate clam flavor without the heaviness of a cream based chowder. If you have a deep fryer or a dutch oven, do up some clam fritters for the authentic rhode island experience.
This guy, this guy right heah.
http://shesinthekitchen.blogspot.com/search/label/soups