best winter soups

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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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The flavor-packed, vegan, zero-waste lentil-and-greens soup that earned a hundred encores and endless spins

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By Leslie Brenner

Feel like eating vegan today? Treat yourself to a pot of an easy, surprisingly quick-to-make lentil soup. It’s deliciously multi-dimensional: underlined with warm spices, brightened with tomato, umamified with dried mushrooms, enlivened with tender greens. It’s packed with phytochemicals and health-enhancing super-foods. It’s a colorful, health-enhancing heavy-lifter for your zero-waste aspirations that will fill your kitchen with gorgeous aromas.

It cooks in about an hour. Make a pot in the morning, and if you’re working at home, you have a week’s worth of magnificent lunches. Work somewhere away? It’s quick enough to pull together when you get home.

If you keep lentils and a can of tomatoes on hand, and tend to have greens in the fridge (including that half-bag of tired arugula, or a some frozen spinach), you can put the soup together whenever you feel like it without shopping.

This is not the first time I’ve written about this soup; I dreamt it up 7 years ago and have been sustained by it and spinning on it ever since.

Start with aromatic vegetables: onion, carrot, celery and friends. Add herbs and garlic, then spices — turmeric and coriander. The base can be French green lentils or black Umbrian lentils, or both. A can of diced tomatoes plus water, and simmer for 45 or 50 minutes. Toss in greens — half a bag of baby kale, spinach or arugula, maybe some cayenne or harissa. That’s it.

Make it once, and then you can spin endlessly. Stare into your fridge before you start and see what vegetables need to be used up — raw in the drawer, or cooked leftovers. Is a turnip or a piece of daikon lurking therein? Dice it and throw it in with the carrots. Raw cauliflower or broccoli? Dice ‘em up and in they go with the tomatoes. Cooked spinach, carrots, cauliflower or what have you? Toss them in halfway through, or near the end. You are not sacrificing the soup’s integrity by cleaning out your fridge into the pot: You’re making something even more delicious.

You can play with the spices, too, depending on your mood. Sometimes I feel like pushing the soup in an Asian direction, and add ginger — fresh or ground. When I do that, I frequently throw in some red lentils for added dal-like creaminess. Maybe I’ll triple the turmeric and swap dried shiitakes for the porcini.

Anyway, you get the idea. If you’re the follow-a-recipe type, here are two — the original, and the gingery, turmeric-happy spin.

RECIPE: Gingery Lentil and Greens Soup

Are you more the let-me-loose-to-improvise kind of cook? Here’s a master recipe with endless opportunities to spin. I love to do this on Sunday, for the fridge-clean win.