Looking for a great simple supper? Whip up a hearty and filling soup. It’s one of the best light dinner options when the weather is cold! Just pair a big bowl of soup with a wheat roll or crackers and call it a meal. There’s something comforting about slowly simmering a homemade pot of soup over the stove until the flavors meld together perfectly. It can really hit the spot on a cold day or night.
Here are some tips on how to make your soup the best it can be:
Start with a Delicious Liquid
Soups are mostly water, but it’s often disguised as broth or stock, wine, or milk. Whatever the liquid in your soup is, use one that you would want to drink.
The vast majority of the time, the liquid in soup is stock or broth. It is best to use homemade, but many delis and butchers sell freshly made frozen stock that works great, too. If you get yours from the grocery store, consider diluting it with water (about 4 parts broth to 1 part water) and find a brand sold in boxes instead of cans to avoid a slightly tinny taste. When adding wine to soups, be sure to bring it to a boil and let it cook for at least 10 minutes to cook off the harshest of the alcohol.
2. Sweat the Aromatics
Aromatics include onions, leeks, garlic, and often celery and carrots. Cooking them over low to medium heat in the pan before adding any liquid will help soften their texture and blend their flavors. Cook, stirring occasionally, until they are soft but not browning, about 5 minutes. The goal is to break down their cellulose (making them easier to eat or purée later) and get them to give off some of their liquid, which will deepen the flavor of the soup. Peel and chop onions as uniformly as you can so they cook evenly.
3. Garnish like a Pro
Go beyond chopped parsley and freshly ground black pepper (although they both make great garnishes for many soups). Chefs know that the best soup garnishes offer a contrasting flavor or texture to both complement and highlight the soup.
4. Boost the Flavor
- Cheese Rinds – Throw an otherwise useless cheese rind into your soup.
- Whole Sprigs of Thyme – Throw in whole sprigs of thyme; the leaves will come off on their own, and you just pull out the stalks.
- Poultry Seasoning – A good boost for vegetable soup.
- Yogurt – A great way to make soup creamy.
- Greens – Stir in a handful of greens right at the end. They wilt and become a tasty part of the soup.
- V8 – Savory vegetable juice is a great way to perk up a soup.
- Roasted Garlic – Contributes a wonderful flavor.
Freezing Your Soup
Soups are one of the easiest and most reliable dishes to freeze. You can come home from work, warm up a bowl of frozen soup, and know without a doubt that it will be delicious. So make a double batch of the soups you love most and freeze some for later with these tips.
Many of the rules for freezing soup basically come down to holding back the ingredients that won’t freeze well and then adding them back in when you reheat the soup later. If you’re making some soup to eat now and some to freeze, just scoop out the portion you want to freeze before adding these final ingredients.
- Hold back the cream: cream and milk tend to separate and become grainy if frozen. It’s easy enough to freeze the soup without this ingredient and stir it in while reheating. Non-dairy milks like soy milk and coconut milk theoretically freeze better, but I still find the soup is best when they are added later.
- Hold back the pasta: pasta turns to mush after freezing and is completely unappetizing. It’s much better to boil fresh pasta and add this directly to the reheated soup.
- Hold back any ingredients added in the last 5 minutes: ingredients like fresh herbs and eggs tend to be very delicate, which is why they’re added so late in the game. This makes it likely that they won’t stand up well to being frozen and will taste better if added fresh (the exception to this is canned beans, which do fine when frozen).
- Freeze Small Portions: smaller portions are quicker to warm up for a weeknight meal and easier to arrange in a crowded freezer.
Soups That Freeze Best: Bean soups, vegetable soups, broth-based soups, soups with brown rice or wild rice, pureed soups, beef and chicken soups.
On a final note, remember to date and label all your containers of soup. Soups tend to all look the same once frozen, so you’ll be glad you did!
Adapted from ‘Tips from the Kitchn’