6 Things You Need to Know Before You Make Soup

Ethan Calabrese

We're big fans of soup in any form and in any season. Fall, winter, cheesy, healthy, if it's in a bowl, we're eating it. But in all our soup-making and consuming, we've learned a few key things that any soup master should know. Consider this your roadmap to better soup stat: 

1. Salt at every stage. 

Soup-making is kind of like building a tower. In a tower, every level affects the one above it — if one layer isn't strong, the tower falls down. It's the same principle with soup: if one step doesn't taste good, nothing you add on top of it will taste good, either. So whether you're starting with sautéed onions, or adding ground meat, or pouring over a basic stock, you need to give each its own shot of salt and pepper. It seems like overkill, but well-seasoned layers are what create depth of flavor. 

2. Consider your stock options.

We tend to think of chicken broth as the catch-all liquid. But it's worth considering some others. Beef broth adds lots of richness to pasta-based soups, like meatball sub soup (it also holds up well to veggies like kale). Vegetable stock isn't just for vegetarians: because it's made with so many vegetables, it's also key for soups that require some complexity (curries, etc). Fish stock is your obvious choice for chowders, but it's also great for one-note soups that could use a savory kick (amazing in tomato soup!).

*On that note, I know that purists will tell you homemade stocks and broths are always the right choice. But I can be supremely lazy, so I usually just go for canned. 

Ethan Calabrese

3. Embrace the spice world. 

Turmeric adds not only color, but also an earthiness. Coriander gives vegetable soups more depth. Cumin is great for meaty, hearty soups, like Chicken Chili Verde. On that note, go big or go home: you might think that a tablespoon of spice is too much, but once it gets diluted in liquid, it loses a lot of punch. 

4. Don't boil it to death. 

We all need to get dinner to the table faster, so we tend to crank our soups to high and walk away. This is especially the case when cooking soups with meat — we feel like we need to turn the heat up to make sure everything gets cooked safely. But then we wonder why our soups end up a bowl of flavorless mush. The truth is, soup needs a more gentle touch: it should be brought up to boil slowly, then immediately turned down to barely a simmer (which means the surface of the soup just slightly bubbles and moves). The flavors of the ingredients will meld better, and your ingredients will maintain their structure and integrity. 

5. Add creaminess without cream.

There's nothing like heavy cream or half and half to give soups more body. But on occasion — a very rare occasion, to be fair — we want something that's a little healthier. As an ingredient, coconut milk is the perfect alternative, giving thinner soups a heavier texture — like this Coconut Shrimp Curry. In terms of technique, emersion blending is brilliant: give your soup a quick blitz with a stick blender and it'll turn out rich and slightly frothy. But also let's be honest: a little cream will not kill you.

Ethan Calabrese

6. Drop some acid. 

Just as the soup is finishing cooking, add a splash of something with a kick. It could be white wine in an onion soup, a touch of apple cider vinegar in a butternut squash soup, or a shot of beer in a spicy pork chili. A little acid really does brighten up the whole pot. 

From: Delish

By Joanna Saltz