Our master recipe leads to a magnificent soup built from whatever you have in your pantry.
Just a couple months ago we were close to proclaiming 2020 to be The Year of the Soup. Now, all of a sudden soup seems like, ahem, just what the doctor ordered.
Step away from the InstantPot. Looks like we’ll all be spending much more time at home, so might as well make the best of it by embracing the pleasures of slow, luxuriously lazy cooking.
There are so many reasons to make soup right now — or tonight, or tomorrow, or this weekend or next week:
• You’re stuck working at home, you can put a soup on to simmer in the morning, and you have perfect lunch, and dinner. And lunch tomorrow. And dinner the next day.
• It’s the perfect thing to make for an elderly friend, relative or neighbor who needs to stay home. They can eat some now and freeze the rest for later. It’s easy to double a recipe so there’s plenty to go around.
• It’s the ultimate comfort food for a scary, upsetting time. The act of soup-cooking is soothing (sweating an onion, stirring in spices), and the scents and sounds are soul-sustaining — while you’re working, or playing with your kids, or binge-watching or video chatting.
Joan’s Chicken Soup: best in the universe!
• If someone in your household is under the weather, chicken soup is certainly in order (and my mom’s is the best in the universe). Keep chicken in freezer just in case.
• If you haven’t made it out to the grocery store, and you need to create a meal from what you have around in the pantry, our master Sunday Super Soup recipe tells you how to turn whatever you have into something delicious.
• If you want to celebrate spring without venturing to a farmer’s market or crowded store, here’s a miraculously vibrant soup to whip up from those frozen peas you forgot about.
You can even stock your larder for a soup-forward near future.
THINGS TO PICK UP AND KEEP STOCKED
Dried legumes: lentils (French green, black, red); split peas; white beans (cannellini, limas, navy); kidney beans; black-eyed peas (for good luck, which we all need!)
Canned tomatoes
Jars of roasted peppers (in case you lose access to fresh ones)
Spices: Coriander seed; cumin seed; cayenne; turmeric; powdered ginger; dried chiles/crushed chile pepper; Aleppo pepper; black pepper
Boxes of chicken and/or vegetable stock (if you want to make easy purées of fresh vegetables)
Rice and soup-appropriate pasta (small elbow macaroni; all those really tiny shapes like orzo, ditalini and stellini; egg noodles)
Salt (how awful would it be if there were a run on salt?)
Onions and other allium-family members: garlic, shallots. Leeks are optional.
Herbs: If you’re worried about access to fresh herbs, stock up on dried thyme, oregano, rosemary, herbes de Provence
Fresh ginger, which keeps refrigerated a long time
Aromatic vegetables like carrots, celery and turnips (they last longer than you might think)
A mix of fresh and frozen greens and other veg to throw into soup (spinach, peas, broccoli)
If you eat meat, meats you can freeze if you don’t use them right away: ham hocks, whole cut-up chicken, cut-up lamb shoulder, beef shanks and such
OK, then — let’s cook some soup! Here is a link to our Soups page, where you can find our master Sunday Super Soup, Black Bean Soup with Roasted Vegetables, Joan’s Chicken Soup, an assortment of lentil soups, an Iranian Bean and Vegetable Soup and more.
Is there a soup you’d like us to dive into and create a killer recipe for? Please let us know in a comment! In fact, since so many of us are stuck at home, we’d love to hear from you in general — how are you doing, what are you cooking, how do you feel about soup, what’s your favorite? Stay safe and healthy, everyone. We love you.