6 Essential (and riffable!) soups to take you through fall and beyond
Joan’s Chicken Soup
By Leslie Brenner
Goodbye, gazpacho. Hello, chicken soup, pozole rojo, and vegan lentil-kale.
That’s my soup forecast, and I’m sticking to it. (Though there is a case to be made for a last-tomato-hurrah batch of Gazpacho Sevillano).
The six soups rounded up here are all elemental and delicious — those I return to year after year. They’re also endlessly riffable and adaptable; many can be spun vegan or vegetarian, if they aren’t already.
Good Old-Fashioned Jewish Chicken Soup
I’m leading off with the mother of all chicken soups — in other words, my mother’s chicken soup. With zero bias I can state that it’s absolutely the best in the world. (And no, this one cannot be spun vegan. But you knew that.)
There are so many ailments going around just now — sore throats, colds and lots of Covid. In fact, yesterday I came down with it for the first time. Fortunately, as I’m vaxxed and double-boosted, it’s a mild case. I’m sequestered upstairs, and my husband downstairs; I sent him out to buy ingredients and made myself a batch of my favorite cure-all. (In this Washington Post story, a doctor recommends chicken soup for mild Covid and other cold-like ailments.)
Of course chicken soup is a universal remedy and comfort food, with beloved versions from Mexico and Brazil to China, Vietnam and Thailand, to India, Iran and Ethiopia, and many more. There’s even a wonderful cookbook collecting them: Jenn Louis’ Chicken Soup Manifesto.
Here’s our roundup of fabulous chicken soups from around the world.
Made-To-Order Miso Soup
Although my mom nearly always insisted on a chicken soup remedy anytime anyone sneezed, she also swore by a second remedy — miso soup and hot sake.
If you get in the habit of keeping dashi (quickly made Japanese stock) on hand, you can have miso soup on the table in about 10 minutes. Not kidding! Our recipe is a very basic one: Heat some classic dashi made with bonito flakes, whisk in white miso, garnish with tofu, scallions and rehydrated wakame (seaweed). That’s all there is to it, and it’s so good.
Want to make it vegan? Swap that dashi for a quick, easy-to-make kombu dashi, by simmering a piece of kombu (about four inches square) in a quart of filtered water for about ten minutes. Remove the kombu and you have vegan dashi.
Either way, you can riff your heart away — leave out the wakami, use red miso instead of white, simmer sliced carrots and/or onions, or diced daikon or turnips in the dashi before whisking in the miso, or drop in a handful of baby spinach (which will cook almost instantly).
Pozole Rojo: Keep it Simple, or Totally Geek Out
Pozoles come in all the main colors of the Mexican flag: green, white and red. All can be wonderful. My personal favorite is pozole rojo — whether it’s a relatively simple (though long-cooking) one based on a can of hominy, or a deep-dive version that’s a 6 to 8-hour project.
Why would anyone want to spend 8 hours making pozole? Because it’s a great way to dip your toes Into what it’s like to make your own nixtamal — that’s corn treatead with an alkaline solution to make it suitable to grind into masa for tortillas and other shapes. Only with pozole, you don’t grind it; you leave the kernels whole. Use heirloom corn from Mexico, and you’ll have a pozole like none you’ve ever tasted — it’s spectacular. Who doesn’t love a cooking project with a glorious reward at the end?
Our simpler version — also delicious — is adapted from Mely Martínez’s Mexico in my Kitchen.
Either way you choose, you can riff away on the garnishes.
Split Pea Soup: Easy, Classic Comfort
Here’s a soup I’ve been making my entire adult life (a long time!). It’s so good and easy in its unadulterated form, I like to keep it classic, and I try to always keep a pound or two of split peas on hand in case the craving strikes (it’s my husband’s favorite soup).
The only modifications I sometimes make is with the meat. I like split pea soup best with ham hock, but if I have some smoked sausage, or a smoked turkey leg, a slab of ham or a ham bone on hand, I’ll use that instead.
A Vegan Lentil Soup Made for Riffing
If, however, you’re looking for a dried legume situation in which you can improvise your fridge away, this one’s for you. It happens to be vegan.
It’s intoxicatingly delicious as written, but it’s so adaptable I wrote a whole story about how to riff on it, along with a customizable master recipe.
There’s also a version that stars black and red lentils boosted with a lot of ginger and turmeric, and changes up the greens. That’s the anti-oxidant special.
Roasted Cauliflower Soup to Dress as You Like
If you’re looking for a dreamy puréed soup you could almost make with your eyes closed, this is it. Roast pieces of cauliflower to concentrate their favor, drop them in simmering broth (vegetable or chicken), simmer to meld the flavors, then give it a blitz (right in the pot) with an immersion blender or (out of the pot) with a regular one, till it’s perfectly velvety.
Garnish it with a swirl of harissa sauce (just mix harissa from a tube with a little broth), or browned butter. Want to get fancy? Add fried sage (great with browned butter), or swap the swirl for some crisped prosciutto (bake slices at 375 degrees for 10 minutes, let cool and crisp up on the pan). Looking for extra richness? Stir in a little cream or crème fraîche before garnishing.
RECIPE: Roasted Cauliflower Soup
And now we’ll excuse you while you dust off that soup pot.
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