By Andrea Meyers

When the weather turns cold and icy, the first things on my mind are warm coats and boots and hot soups. I love the aroma of a pot of simple ingredients cooking slowly and transforming into a thing of comfort and beauty, and when cold and flu season hits home, all I want is a steaming bowl of chicken noodle soup. On the culinary difficulty scale, most soups rate pretty easy and many soups can be started early in the day and allowed to cook at a simmer on the stove or in a slow cooker all day until you are ready to enjoy it. Soups can be light and healthy or rich and decadent, but you can usually lighten up a rich recipe by substituting ingredients.

A good soup often requires a good stock or broth made from vegetables, poultry, meat, or seafood, and you can make your own or use a purchased stock for convenience. Making stock is relatively easy, you just need to plan ahead and allow yourself enough time. Often ingredients for stock are saved as scraps and frozen until ready for use, though you can also purchase stock ingredients. You can find instructions for making stocks at Married with Dinner (chicken stock), Clifford A. Wright (beef stock), and Andrea’s Recipes (vegetable stock). Some of the following soups require stock, but some use other liquids for flavor.

After trying many different cream of mushroom soup recipes, I have to say that this Cream of Wild Mushroom Soup from Elise of Simply Recipes is my favorite. The heavy cream and butter puts this soup in the decadent category, but the flavor is wonderful and the addition of Madeira wine it makes a special soup to serve to guests.

Clam chowder comes in a white version (New England) or a red version (Manhattan), and the New England type may or may not be very thick with cream. Chef Emeril Lagasse is a famous New England native, and he has several versions of clam chowder available on Emerils.com.

A round-up of soups would be incomplete without minestrone, and Lolo of Vegan Yum Yum serves up a beautiful and healthy one with caramelized onions, fire-roasted tomatoes, and plenty of garlic, herbs, and other vegetables.

If you want to spice up your soup repertoire, The Ultimate Stew Recipe Collection from Andrew of Spittoon Extra will give you plenty of variety. In 2007 three well-known food bloggers got together to host a one-year event they dubbed Waiter, There’s Something in My… Each month the hosts chose a different food for everyone to make, and to kick off the event last January they asked the participants to make stew. The round-up boasted 44 recipes by food bloggers from all over the world, and it has some real gems such as Chicken with Prunes & Apricots, Boeuf Bourguignon, and Chicken and Bean Coconut Stew.

Of course FoodieView offers a large selection of soup recipes to whet your appetite. So break out that stock pot and start cooking!

Andrea writes about her adventures in the kitchen at her cooking blog Andrea’s Recipes. She has a collection of soups on her blog, including French Onion, Ajiaco Bogotano, Cream of Baked Potato Soup (pictured), and Cream of Roasted Tomato Soup.

 

This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 6:45 pm and is filed under Recipe Roundup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.