soup recipes

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Soups galore: We've got one for every winter mood

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By Leslie Brenner

You can say what you want about Gen Z, but here’s what I love: They know a good thing when they see it. And then they immortalize it with memes.

Take soup, for instance. My favorite four-letter meal has conquered the internet!

I couldn’t be happier about this development. In college, I majored in Soup. Soup is my middle name. Soup soup soup soup soup.

Here at Cooks Without Borders, we’ve got a soup for every winter mood. Gen Z, I’m talking to you.

Mood: Stop (all day) and smell the roses

Persian Chicken Soup with Chicken-and-Lamb Meatballs

When you’re in the mood for a major project — one that will fill your living space with the dreamiest fragrances you can imagine — this transporting soup adapted from Najmieh Batmanglij’s Food of Life delivers. Called abgusht-e morgh ba kufteh-ye nokhodchi in Farsi, it’s garnished with grated garlic, fresh herbs and dried rose petals.

Mood: Get me back to a clearer space

Miso Soup

In a perfect world, you can have miso soup anytime you want it. But hey — you can even have it in a highly imperfect world! Take ten minutes to make a batch of dashi, keep miso and tofu in the fridge (both keep for a long time) and the foundational soup is yours practically on demand. Stir in miso, garnish and enjoy.

Mood: Navel-gazing

Maria Elena Machado's Sopa de Ombligo

Sometimes you just need to stare at your belly button. Or you could stare at the belly-button-like dumplings in a sumptuous pinto-bean soup — and then eat them.

Mood: Get me outta here!

Tom Kha Kai (Coconut-Galangal Chicken Soup)

If you’d rather be somewhere warm, sunny and far away — Bangkok, for instance — this irresistible Thai soup will take you there. Ours is adapted from Leela Punyaratabandhu’s seminal Simple Thai Food.

Mood: Virtuous vegan fridge-clearing brawl

Sunday Super Soup

This bad boy clears your crisper drawer, empties fridge shelves of veggie leftovers and helps you achieve zero waste — all while filling your kitchen with warm and spicy smells. Our master recipe is fully customizable according to what you’ve got. It’s also devastatingly delicious.

Mood: Snowed in, feeling nice and lazy

Classic Split Pea Soup

Make this once, and you could probably do it blindfolded next time. I keep split peas in the pantry and a ham hock in the freezer all winter just in case the mood strikes.

Mood: Fed up with fundamentalism

Ab Ghooshte Fasl (Iranian Bean and Vegetable Soup)

There are many ways we can support the brave women of Iran — starting by continuing to be engaged in the struggle for their freedom from tyranny. Make this soup in their honor.

Mood: I want to join Club Nixtamal

Heirloom Corn Pozole Rojo

If you’re nixtamal curious but don’t happen to own a molino to grind corn, I invite you to make heirloom corn pozole from scratch. If you’re serious about Mexican cooking, consider doing this once in your life — it’ll be the best pozole you’ve ever had. Recipe links to a shortcut version, too.

Mood: Wish spring would hurry up!

Ridiculously Easy Minted Pea Soup

This beautiful bowl is made from lettuce, butter, salt, pepper, mint and a bag of frozen peas. My take on a classic French soup called potage Saint-Germain, it’s simple enough for a weeknight yet elegant enough for a big-deal dinner. You’d swear those peas were fresh.

Mood: Spa retreat

Vegan Spring Beauty Soup

Here’s another one to help you channel spring. There’s already asparagus from California in the markets, and this is another that offers a frozen pea-cheat.

Mood: Pass the penicillin

Joan’s Chicken Soup

Of course winter is chicken soup season, and my mom made the best — of theJewish penicillin-variety, anyway. I’m so happy to share the recipe with you. Feel better.

Mood: Winter greens wonderland

Chloé’s Vegan Gumbo Z’herbes

Gumbo Z’herbes is a Louisiana tradition more associated with the season of Lent than the dead of winter, but our friend Chloé Landrieu-Murphy’s delicious version is packed with a ton of winter greens, so please be our guest!

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Around the world in chicken soup: Next stop Tibet, for a fresh and fiery bowl of thukpa

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Thukpa, Tibet’s fierychicken-noodle soup

Think chicken soup is bland or boring? You’ll sing a different tune after one taste of Thukpa, the fiery chicken-noodle soup of Tibet.

We found this one in Chaat: Recipes from the Kitchens, Markets and Railways of India.

“The first time I tasted thukpa was after I arrived on a train in Guwahati on a cold winter’s day,” writes James Beard Award-winning chef Maneet Chauhan in the headnote. (Chauhan, who has several restaurants in Nashville, Tennessee, wrote the book with Jody Eddy.) “Seeking warmth, I followed the aroma of chicken soup to a vendor spooning golden thukpa into dented metal bowls. In that single bowl of soup I found all the reassurance that the long journey had been worth it.”

It became a favorite comfort food for her and her husband when they spent chilly winters in New York City. 

Guwahati, in case you’re a bit rusty on your Indian geography, is in the northeastern part of the subcontinent, next to Bhutan, about 200 miles from the Tibet border.

Chock full of shredded cabbage, carrot, bell peppers, green beans, chicken and rice noodles, scented with ginger and cumin, fired up with serrano chile, garnished with scallions and bean sprouts, it’s a nourishing meal in a bowl. 

And because it’s based on store-bought chicken broth, it comes together quickly (cooking time is about 30 to 35 minutes, once you’ve got everything prepped). It’s simple, too: blitz together tomatoes, ginger, garlic, chiles and cumin with a little oil, cook the paste briefly with cut-up boneless chicken thighs, add broth and vegetables and simmer till the chicken’s cooked through. Add rice noodles and a splash of lemon juice, dress up with scallions and bean sprouts and dinner is served.

I’m thinking that whether or not anyone in your crew is under the weather, it’s just the thing for an easy, light holiday-week or between-the-holidays dinner — lively, bright and spicy and filled with fresh veg. The rice noodles keep it squarely in the comfort food zone.

RECIPE: Maneet Chauhan’s Thukpa

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for a cooking project sure to enthrall kids over the holidays, consider making paneer — fresh Indian cheese — also from Chauhan’s book.

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April 25 is Slow Food Youth Network's World Disco Soup Day: Let us help you build a rockin' soup!

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Soup.jpg

Four years ago, Slow Food Youth Network founded an annual international event — World Disco Soup Day. On that day each year, parties are thrown in which food waste is turned into a disco soup. The goal is to end food waste, raise awareness around zero waste, feed people and celebrate when you do save food.

This year’s event is coming right up: Saturday, April 25.

It’s easy to celebrate saving food when what you create from food scraps is delicious. Which it can always be — and we’re here to help show you how to make it so.

Disco Soup.jpg

As part of the event, SFYN are asking participants to upload recipes from their elders that make delicious use of food scraps. I was about to do that, but when I was asked to start uploading ingredients and quantities, I realized it wasn’t going to work: This isn’t the approach we take when we cook this way. Instead, we peer into the fridge and think about how we’re going to use that cup of leftover black beans and those two boiled potatoes, those three celery stalks that are about to wilt and the cupful of arugula that’s too limp for a salad.

More often than not, we make a soup. And from now on, I’ll think of it as a disco soup! (Thank you, SFYN!).

We kicked off New Year’s in January by proclaiming 2020 The Year of the Soup, and gave a master recipe for making a Sunday Super Soup from stuff in the pantry and leftovers in the fridge. Here’s the story (which walks through how to change your relationship with food scraps), and here’s a more formalized version of the master recipe:

I’m hoping SFYN’s young members find the master soup recipe useful. (I’m a member of regular Slow Food USA, the Dallas Fort Worth chapter.)

If you’re not accustomed to cooking this way, now is a great time to start! You can be super mindful of not throwing out usable food scraps this week. Save everything. I use a dedicated zipper bag for odds and ends trimmed from carrots and onions, stray herbs, etc.

And we will help you strategize! If you find yourself with a cupful of white beans, some celery and half an onion, for instance, we’ll tell you how to turn that into a salad that makes a lovely lunch — or your own disco soup for next Saturday!

Just let us know in a comment at the end of this story. (PLEASE comment — we are eager to hear from you and engage!) We’ll suggest ideas — and everyone else can jump in an we can toss them back and forth.

In the meantime, we’re going to be thinking about ideas for cold disco soup, in case the weather is fine whether you might be on Saturday. Green gazpacho!

Sound good? Save scraps! Please share this story, with the hashtags #worlddiscosoupday #wdsd20 #Re_generation #fillbelliesnotbins #slowfoodyouthnetwork #sfyn

Plan for a big ol’ disco soup on Saturday, April 25. And stay safe.














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Warming lentil super-detox soup is a meatless Monday winter favorite

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Warming Lentil Super-Detox Soup

Post-holiday food should never be about repentance. It should be about deliciousness and healthy renewal – clean eating at its best. 

That's why, after New Year's Eve revelry followed by an indulgent New Year's Eve lunch (on the heels of Christmas feasts and other holiday parties), what I craved for dinner was a warming bowl of chunky, vegan lentil-and-vegetable soup. Happily, I'd created one a couple weeks before – one that my family went crazy for. I'd whip up something like it again.

Only this time, I'd boost the turmeric, said to be a powerful antioxidant with terrific anti-inflammatory properties. And I'd add ginger, which I felt would work with the soup's flavors. And I'd try swapping in some red lentils, which have a softer texture than the green or black ones in the original. I didn't have any baby kale in the house, so I used baby arugula. And I left out the celery.

You know what? The soup was every bit as delicious; the ginger took it in a slightly different (and still wonderful) direction. 

It's a soup that can be all things to all people  or at least many kinds of people. It's vegan. It's gluten-free. The only processed ingredients are minimally processed (a can of tomatoes and the ground spices), so it's very clean. 

It's so soul-satisfying that carnivores probably won't miss the meat. Wylie, home for college for winter break, had three bowls. If you don't mention it's healthy, no one will be the wiser. 

Best of all, you can whip it up in a flash. Putting it together takes about 10 minutes, 15 max (if, say, you're in a post-holiday stupor). In less than an hour, it's done. 

Cooking for just one or two? Make a batch, eat some tonight, then take it to work later this week in a Thermos for lunch. 

Ready for the recipe? Here you go...

Happy New Year!!!

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Smashingly elegant roasted cauliflower soup may be the easiest, most versatile starter in the universe

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There's nothing easier and more satisfying than making a fabulous soup simply by simmering vegetables in chicken broth then puréeing them till smooth and velvety. It's something I've done a million times, with so many different vegetables: broccoli; leeks with potatoes; asparagus; cauliflower or a combo of several. 

It has long been one of my go-to soups when I want a quick weeknight fix that's satisfying and delicious, but also low calorie, super healthful and dairy-free. A serving is only about 100 calories, and it's packed with nutrition. It needs no cream for its lovely body, though if you want to enrich it with cream or crème fraîche, that's a different kind of great. 

I've also, on many occasions, served a cauliflower version as a starter at a dinner party. Why? It's easy and stress-fee, you can make it ahead, everyone loves it, and you can dress it up with so many kinds of garnishes. Crisped-then-crumbled prosciutto (or yes, bacon). Shaved white truffles (if you're lucky enough to have one). Fried sage. You could even substitute vegetable broth for the chicken broth, and voilà, it's vegan.

A couple nights ago something dawned on me. I love this soup. And I love roasted cauliflower. Why not roast the cauliflower first, as an easy way of deepening the flavor?

And so I did, and served the soup – garnished with a swirl of brown butter – as a first course for a French-themed Christmas Eve dinner.  It was a hit. It's really kind of incredible that you can get such a bang from such few ingredients (three), and such humble ones (cauliflower, chicken broth, olive oil. I'm not counting white pepper). Plus the garnish, which is just butter.

The next day, I did it again, and garnished it with harissa sauce – made in two seconds flat by combining harissa from a tube with a little chicken broth. Swirled that in, I did. And wow. It gave the soup a completely different character: exotic, North Africanish. Delicious. I love harissa. 

If you love cauliflower, please try this soup. I guarantee you will love it.

 

 

 

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Chicken soup is the most soothingly delicious (and supremely restorative!) thing in the world for what ails you

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How are you feeling? Not so great? Yeah, I thought so. 

When someone sneezes chez moi, I reach for a chicken – to make soup. It's what my mom always did. And I've always used her recipe.

And if the husband or the son or whoever happened to sneeze isn't actually under the weather, all the better: The chicken soup idea has been planted, and I can't shake it. As the soup simmers, it fills the house with wonderful smells. Chicken soup was the fragrance of my childhood (along with Chanel No. 5, but never at the same time). And I always find diving into a big bowl of chickeny broth with carrots, celery and noodles to be supremely restorative. No one needs to be ailing for chicken soup to be a splendid idea. 

Lots of cultures celebrate chicken soup. There's Chinese wonton soup, Thai thom ka gai (with coconut and lemongrass), Mexican tortilla soup and many more. I love them all. 

Jewish penicillin

Jewish penicillin

But for Ashkenazi Jews, no matter how far-removed we are from the old country (wherever in Eastern Europe that may be), it's a primal dish, a cornerstone of Jewish culture – right up there with bagels and chopped liver. And like bagels, it's one of the few Ashkenazi dishes to have infiltrated mainstream American culture. Campbell's Chicken Soup: Is that Jewish, or American? You get my drift.

Fragrant, delicious chicken soup is very easy to make – easier, I'd say, than running out to a deli to pick some up, should you happen to be in possession of a chicken, celery and carrots. In fact, if you've never made it before, once you try it, you'll wonder why it took you so long to make your own.

It goes like this: Cut up a chicken, ask the butcher to cut one up for you or buy one already cut up. The benefit of the first two are you can keep the back and neck to put in the soup -- they add lots of richness. Cover it in cold water, bring to a simmer, and skim. Add aromatic vegetables: onion, carrot and celery. My mom always added parsnip, too, so I follow suit, but it's not essential. If you skip it, add another carrot. Throw in a bunch of dill. Let it simmer an hour and a half or two hours. 

Add salt and pepper, and it's basically done. My mom always cooked fine egg noodles separately, put some in each bowl, and then strained some soup directly into each bowl, along with some carrots and celery. She would give us a plate of the chicken separately, and I shudder to think now that we often ate it with ketchup.

 I usually strain the whole soup –– reserving the chicken meat, carrots, celery and parsnip and adding them back into the clear soup. Put some cooked noodles in each bowl, and ladle it in.

My recipe includes measurements, but you don't have to measure things to make chicken soup; it's a soup made by feel. My mom never put garlic in hers, but I often do – especially if the soup is serving as Jewish penicillin; then I throw in a whole head, separated into cloves but not peeled. Sometimes I add a leek, or parsley. Have extra chicken parts in the freezer? Throw those in, for sure, and add a little more water. 

OK. That is my mom's gift to you. Wear it in good health.