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It’s a mystery to me why more people don’t make their own soup – it’s so easy and much nicer than processed. Dried soup mixes all tend to taste the same after a while, with an indescribable background taste that percolates through, even if you only use it as a base. Canned soups are generally much too salty for my taste and, regardless of what ‘we’ say in The Joy of Cooking, have a blandness and homogeneity that is inescapable in the canning process. Even Baxter’s soups, the best I’ve eaten from tins, are inferior to home made. Canned soups also take up a huge amount of stowage space for something that will generally only be eaten as a lunch or a starter – or worse, an addition to make something else have more flavour.
I suspect that people are put off
from making soup themselves, due to the manic insistence of most
cookery book writers, on ‘good stock’. While it’s perfectly
true that if you slave away for hours making stock, you may end up
with a sublime soup, in most cases, the basic ingredients, plus herbs
and spices, butter or a full-flavoured olive oil, will result in a
more than acceptable dish. I never use stock cubes, finding that
they often have the same background taste that I find in dried soup,
and because they make all your soups taste the same; however, here in New Zealand, Bin Inn sells mushroom stock powder, which tastes much more of mushroom than salt and MSG, so I occasionally make an exception, there. Unfortunately, most stock cubes appear to be made largely of salt and contain MSG, and I
can see no good reason for adding this to my diet, particularly as I
know quite a number of people who react badly to it.However, if you have managed to find a good source for stock cubes or powder, feel free to add it to your soup. However, you may want to be a bit cautious about using salt (water) until the soup is cooked and you can taste it.
Although too many commercially made soups are over-salted, it has to be said that soup does require generous amounts of that condiment. A good rule of thumb is to use one-third seawater to two-thirds fresh and then to taste at the end, adding more if you think it needs it. The salt, in this instance, is really doing its job of bringing out the flavour and I often find that if the soup seems surprisingly bland, 1/4 tsp of salt will make all the difference. Most of the following recipes would need at least 1/2 tsp salt in them, if you're using fresh water.
A pressure cooker really comes into it own for soup making – even for vegetarians, who aren’t forcing flavour from all those bones. Beans are often used as a base, and will cook a lot more quickly in a pressure cooker, but they also bring together flavours in a way that would otherwise take 2 or 3 hours of gentle simmering. Of course, if you have a diesel cooker, they are ideal for making soup!
If you have the space, treat yourself to some decent-sized, 500 ml/1 pt bowls, for main-course soups. One cup is sufficient for a starter. Insulated bowls are great if you spend much time in cold places.
Soup can make a lovely first course, for when you have friends round. Mushroom or asparagus soups are extravagant and luxurious, but the lentil and carrot soup is not particularly filling, and cream of tomato is cheap, easy and delicious. Soup is an excellent way of stretching the main course when you have more mouths to feed than you anticipated. And because so few people make soup from scratch, the cook can bask in a warm glow of admiration once it has been served.
The present fashion for some reason, is to make soups incredibly thick: a puréed soup is more like blancmange and a chunky soup is like a thick stew. If I want to make a purée as a side dish, I’ll do so: equally, if I want to make stew, that’s what I’ll make. Soup is defined by the OED as a ‟savoury liquid dish made by boiling meat, fish or vegetables in stock or water”; this is the essence of the following recipes.
Soup can also be based around leftovers. Everything from lasagne (break up the pasta, first) to pilaf can be used and they can even mixed together. The real exception to this is curry, which will dominate the soup. Once you’ve added leftover curry to your pot of soup, you'd better finish it off, or you will be eating curried soup forever! For the best results, use additional ingredients that enhance and build on the base – more lentils on a lentil base, extra butter beans on a butter bean base. If you feel confident in your abilities to blend and combine tastes and textures, experiment ad lib. The results will rarely be disappointing. Remember, if the soup seems bland, add a little extra salt – 1/4 tsp at a time – stir the soup, leave it for a couple of minutes and then taste it again.
Bread, in its various forms, is the traditional accompaniment. It can range from a few croutons (freshly made, please: recipe below) per person, through Melba toast and individual rolls, to thick slices from a large loaf, depending on how substantial the soup course is to be. I’ve even seen recipes for using half a round loaf, hollowed out as the soup bowl! Sun-dried tomatoes, olives, cheese, etc can all be added to the bread dough and these additional flavours can be carefully chosen to complement the soup. See the Bread section for ideas.
Below are a couple of recipes for 'curried' soup. In due course, I will have a page of 'Curries for Cooks', for those people who like cooking food from the Indian sub-continent in a more traditional way. I have heard it said that soup isn't a part of the Indian cuisine, but in fact, dal is often served in soup form. However, it's served alongside other dishes, and not on its own as a starter. It is up to the cook to decide how thin or thick she makes it, which would no doubt reflect what else is being served. Thus if you want 'curried' soup, find a nice dal recipe and serve it thin.
Anyway, please try some of the following recipes. I’m sure that you’ll find that home-made soups are much easier and quicker than you realised, and much better than those from cans.
Home-made croutons are about as different from the packaged version sold to decorate your Cæsar Salad, as home-made bread is from white sliced. They only take a few minutes to make and their crunchy texture ideally complements creamy soups. If you are having soup for lunch or as a substantial starter, they add bulk without being overly filling and make a pleasant change from bread and crackers. They're also an excellent way to use up stale bread.
This luxurious soup can be made from whole asparagus. However, the following recipe allows you to have your asparagus and eat it, so to speak, because it’s made from the trimmings.
The best way to trim asparagus is to bend each stalk as close to its base as you can. It will snap off just above the tough section.
Carrot and lemon soup
I first came across this soup in Norway in 1985 and have loved it ever since. Although using a cauliflower for soup may seem rather extravagant, you can usually get two meals out of a very large one and make use of the stem, to boot. I love this soup; it has a delicate, creamy flavour, which is even more delicious if you can make it with butter rather than olive oil. I like to serve it with herb bread.
If you have any choice, try to use a floury potato for this soup; for once, it should be peeled because the soup should end up as a thick, greeny-white purée, which would be less attractive with bits of potato skin.
Italian chickpea soup
This is a substantial and well-flavoured soup, suitable for winter lunches or a main meal. It would go very well with sun-dried tomato bread. The ingredients are not really voyaging vegetables, but they keep reasonably well and you would still be able to make this soup a week into your passage.
Corn chowder
This recipe is a vegetarian replacement for fish chowder and I think that it is equally good: it’s rich and filling – definitely a main-course soup when served with hunks of bread. For all that, it would make a good starter, if you followed it with a light main course.
Split lentil and carrot soup
Warming, filling, nutritious and comforting: lentil soup is one of my favourites. It’s also very quick to make and is ideal for lunch, or as a starter when unexpected guests arrive and you have to spread your dinner further than anticipated!
Minestrone soup
The name ‘Minestrone’ has become something of a catch-all for a tomato, vegetable and pasta soup. I don’t pretend that the following version is any more authentic than most, but it certainly is attractive and full of flavour. I usually use black-eyed peas, because they enrich the colour of the soup, but it’s equally good made with whole lentils or chickpeas.
Mushroom soup
Mushroom soup is lovely and because mushrooms are often something of a luxury, is worth making with extra love and care. There are several variations on the theme, which I give below. The initial recipe is adapted from one of Rose Elliot’s and produces a very elegant concoction, ideal for entertaining. The ones that follow are a little more down to earth.
I created this soup one winters’ night, when I had a few mushrooms left in the locker, and was growing tired of an everlasting cauliflower I'd bought. It was, I admit, a huge one, but as it was the same price as the others, which were two-thirds the size, and super-expensive to boot, I went for the best value for money. I love cauliflower, but after 6 consecutive nights of eating it, I was ready for a change.
When I 'm looking at recipes on line, I often see people suggesting puréeing cauliflower to make a thick and creamy sauce. I thought I’d try this idea, to save mixing up a nut cream – and also out of curiosity. The resulting soup was delicious – better than I’d hoped for – and I had the added satisfaction of cooking it on my little fire. It is therefore very much a cream of mushroom soup. With a slice or two of home-made longevity bread, it made a filling and warming meal.
This is definitely a special-occasion soup, calling as it does for mixed mushrooms and French bread. No prizes for guessing that I love mushrooms! Try finding ceps and oyster mushrooms Even if you can’t find anything particularly exotic, this is still a delicious soup, served in an attractive manner.
Cream of tomato soup
Most of us were brought up with Heinz or Campbell’s soups, and their Cream of Tomato Soup is the standard by which all are judged. Fresh tomatoes make lovely soup, but if you're trying to achieve that almost-cloying sweetness of Mr Heinz’s comfort food, it’s best obtained via tins. As this makes the recipe particularly appropriate for voyagers, I include it with some satisfaction.
The following recipe is simplicity itself, and actually pretty wholesome, to boot, especially when served with large hunks of freshly-baked bread.
If you’re feeling particularly wealthy, the milk can be replaced with cream. Take care not to boil the soup once the cream has been added, particularly if it’s canned or UHT, because it may well separate.
Cream of vegetable soup
I created this soup in Greenland, where I used dried vegetables rather than the fresh shown in the following recipe. It was a lovely soup with dried; it’s wonderful with fresh. Should you be in my predicament, I give the dried vegetable version below. The resulting soup is thick and rich – ideal for a main course in cold weather.
There are more cans included than I would normally use, but the baked beans are an essential ingredient because their tomato sauce gives a flavour that is otherwise hard to obtain, while sweetcorn adds extra flavour and texture. The recipe makes loads – probably enough for four people, but like most soup, it only improves with keeping, and in the conditions in which you’d be eating it, there’d by no problems about its going off.
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