Soup Philosophy?
Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2006 12:35 pm
In a thread a few years ago I believe I stated something like "My first rule of soup is that you can't use too many onions", which, of course prompted many to disagree with me. However, now that the cold weather is on the way, how do you decide what kind of soup to make? While some cookbooks will devide soups into 2 different categories, such as cream based and broth based, I like to divide mine into soups for a meal and soups as a meal course. I thought about this while responding to Jenise's thread on pea soup. For me, soups for a meal are heartier, contain lots of meat and I generally base them on something I have left over in the freezer, such as using backs and neck for chicken noodle, or smoked turkey carcass and drippings to make split pea, or leftover chuck roast to make a vegetable soup. I generally make these on-the-fly, so to speak. However, with soups for a meal course, I usually follow a recipe and the soups are lighter. Some soups I've made this way are French Onion, New England clam chowder, cream of asparugas and mushroom consomme.