You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Soup’ category.
- Ingredients
- 4 slices thick-cut bacon, chopped
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 2 ribs celery, chopped
- 2 carrots, chopped
- 2 Tbsp. fresh parsley, chopped (or dried parsley flakes)
- 1/4 cup flour
- Salt and pepper, to taste
- 4 cups salmon stock, or water, or chicken broth
- 2-3 potatoes, chopped (peel or don’t, however you like it)
- 2 cups boneless, skinless salmon, cut into chunks
- 1-1/2 cups milk or half-n-half
In a large pan, fry the bacon until nearly crispy. Stir in onion, celery, and carrots, Stir fry until onion is translucent. Stir in parsley. Sprinkle flour, salt, and pepper over the vegetables and bacon. Stir until the flour has absorbed the bacon fat. Add salmon stock. Bring to a boil and then simmer, covered, until the vegetables are nearly cooked. Stir in the potatoes and continue to simmer, covered, until they are fork tender. Don’t overcook them. Stir in the salmon and stir gently. Gently stir in milk and continue stirring occasionally until the salmon is cooked through. Taste for salt. Serve warm with crusty bread.
NOTES: I don’t usually measure any of this. If you get to the part where you’re adding the milk and it just doesn’t seem thick enough, go ahead and whisk a couple tablespoons of flour into the milk before stirring it gently into the pan. Optional ingredients to stir in are corn or shredded cheddar cheese or fresh jalapenos. I don’t usually peel my potatoes, but a lot of people do. Today I used chunks of salmon filet and also some ragged pieces, boneless and skinless, scraped from beside the backbone. I’ll go out on a limb and say that you could probably skip the bacon and use olive oil if you wanted to make this vegetarian. It would be a much lighter dish. I suppose you could compensate by using smoked salmon for a portion of the fish called for in the recipe. Be careful at the end while stirring so as to maintain the salmon chunks as much as possible. You’ll have a rather unappetizing mess if you break down the salmon too much. Yes, experience is the best teacher.
I made my own salmon stock by simmering bones and fins in water for a few hours. Then I strained everything out, leaving the broth. I should have added salt, pepper, onion, celery, carrots with the salmon pieces to make the stock REALLY good, but I was out of time and in a hurry. Next time.
- Ingredients
- Olive oil
- 1/2 onion, diced
- 1 carrot, diced
- 1 quart chicken broth, approximate
- 1 tsp. dried dill weed
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 2 potatoes, peeled and cut into 1″ pieces
- 1 zucchini, cut into 1″ pieces
- 2 cups fresh spinach, chopped
- Juice of 1/2 lemon
- 2 hard-boiled eggs, diced
- Sour cream topping, optional
In a large cooking pan, stir fry onion and carrot in a bit of olive oil until the onion is translucent. Stir in chicken broth, dill weed, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat. Let it simmer until the carrot is nearly cooked through. Stir in the potatoes and simmer until nearly cooked through. Stir in the zucchini and simmer a couple minutes. Add more broth now if you think it needs more. Stir in the spinach. Simmer for a couple minutes longer. Stir in lemon juice and eggs. Serve with a dollop of sour cream on top. The yield is about 4 servings.
NOTES: I found this recipe at Lavender and Macarons called Green Borscht (Ukranian Spinach Soup). I had never made anything quite like it before. I mean, chopped hard-boiled eggs in the soup?! It is surprisingly very delicious. I didn’t follow their recipe very closely, but oh well. What you see written here is the way that I did it. Two of us ate the whole thing for lunch, so if that’s all you’re making for four people you better double it. It seems to me this would be easy enough to turn vegetarian if you used vegetable broth instead of chicken broth.
Here is a winter warm-me-up. I don’t measure, so I’ll tell you what’s in it and how you get there, but the amounts are up to you and how many people you’re serving, etc.
- Ingredients
- Bacon, chopped
- Onion, diced
- Celery, diced
- Carrot, diced
- Garlic, minced
- Tomato paste, 1 Tbsp.
- Chicken broth
- Bay leaf
- Salt and pepper
- White beans, like navy beans, canned
- Flour
- Half-and-half, or milk
Stir fry the bacon, onion, celery, and carrot until the bacon is cooked. Drain off bacon grease, if any has accumulated. Over medium heat, add garlic and stir for about a minute. Stir in the tomato paste. Add chicken broth to cover mixture and a little bit more. Stir in bay leaf, salt and pepper. Simmer, covered, until vegetables are tender. Stir in beans. Add more broth to cover, then let it simmer awhile longer.
In a separate bowl stir together flour and a little half-and-half, or milk. A cup or so should do. Pour the dairy slurry into the soup pot and stir while it comes to a boil and thickens a little bit. You can always add more chicken broth, if needed.
Remove bay leaf and serve.
NOTES: If you want to use dried beans, then you’ll have to start early and rehydrate them according to directions I’m sure you can find elsewhere. I usually make this using one 14 oz. can of beans. I use 2 Tbsp. flour to about a cup of dairy liquid. Sometimes it’s really a thick soup and sometimes not. It’s all good. You could make this gluten-free by using gluten-free flour. You could make this dairy-free by omitting the slurry altogether. That is still a very good Bean with Bacon Soup, I just happen to like it with a bit of dairy.
I worked at the King Ko Inn in King Salmon, Alaska during my teenage years in the mid-1970s. Most of that time I was a maid, but for a few months in my senior year of high school I was a waitress. The clientele were German sport fishermen and road laborers working on the upgrade of the road to Naknek. The inn’s manager was this mountainous rough woman named Bea. She was all seeing, all knowing. She cruised through the inn like a giant tanker, trailing a wake of fear behind her. She was fiercely protective, however, of her young employees. One thing you could count on when Bea was cooking on Fridays was her Manhattan Clam Chowder. Most places, in the western United States at least, serve clam chowder on Fridays, but it is New England style. Bea’s Manhattan Clam Chowder is so memorable that I have been trying to duplicate it ever since. I finally found it here at Food 52 a few years ago.
- Ingredients
- 16 oz. (2-8 oz. bottles) clam juice
- 12 oz. (2- 6 oz. cans) chopped clams, drained, reserve juice
- 4 oz. diced bacon
- 1-1/2 cups small dice onion
- 1/2 cup chopped leeks (white part only)
- 1 cup small dice celery
- 2 tsp. minced garlic
- 1/8 heaping tsp. celery seed
- 1/2 tsp. oregano
- 1 tsp. dried thyme
- 1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes
- Salt and pepper
- 2 cups 1/2″ dice peeled potatoes
- 28 oz. chopped canned tomatoes
- 1/2 tsp. horseradish sauce
In a large pan, fry bacon until nearly crisp. Stir in vegetables and saute until soft. Stir in spices. Stir in clam juice and reserved clam juice, salt, pepper, and potatoes. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and let simmer until potatoes are cooked through. Stir in tomatoes and clams. Bring to a boil. Remove from heat. Stir in horseradish sauce. Serve. Oh, yum!!!
Notes: This will serve 4 easily. I like to serve with a crusty bread or oyster crackers. If you’ve never used leeks before, make sure you clean them appropriately. I slice mine in half lengthwise and then run under cold water while I flip the layers of leek, like pages of a book. Leeks hide sand and bugs and have to be cleaned well. Then I chop them up. This is a gluten-free dish.
I am a fan of split pea soup. I buy the spiral-sliced fully-cooked hams at Costco and whenever we have ham for dinner, I save the bone to make split pea soup. If I need to cook chicken for a dish calling for shredded chicken meat, then I might cook the chicken in water and use the flavored water for this split pea soup.
My meals tend to be like guitar riffs where one thing builds on another. This morning I was trying to use up all the Cheesy Potatoes from last night’s Christmas dinner, so I diced some leftover ham and put it on the bottom of a skillet, then plopped the leftover Cheesy Potatoes on the ham. Once heated, I cracked four eggs over the top, covered the skillet until the eggs were cooked to my liking and had a delicious brunch. I digress.
- Ingredients:
- Ham bone (with a little meat left on) or bacon or breakfast sausage
- 4 cups water or chicken stock
- 1/2 # dried green split peas
- 1 cup onion, chopped
- 1 cup celery, chopped
- 2 carrots, chopped
- Salt and pepper
- 2 Tbsp. dried parsley (optional)
- Fresh or frozen peas (optional)
If you are using a ham bone, then just put it into a large stock pot. If you are using bacon or breakfast sausage, then fry it in your stock pot first. If there is a lot of fat, drain it off. Add the water, split peas, onion, celery, carrots, salt and pepper, optional parsley. Bring to a boil and then lower heat to simmer for 3-4 hours. Let it cool a little bit. Remove the ham bone and take the meat off the bone. Return the meat to the pot. Discard the bone. Bring the pot to a boil again. If you are adding fresh or frozen peas, do it now. Let them cook a minute or two. Remove pot from heat. Serve.
I’ve made this enough times now that I feel comfortable sharing. It’s based on a recipe I found at Chena Girl Cooks and she based hers on the Barefoot Contessa. The main WOW of this recipe is the meatballs. And I mean WOW. I have been lucky to get a majority of them into the soup. [Because they are SO good people, myself included, simply eat them off the baking sheet and I’m saying, “Hey, those are for the soup, but go ahead and have one.” Who can stop at one?] These meatballs would make an awesome party food by themselves. The other adjustments that I’ve made is to use baby spinach instead of kale and to use shirataki noodles instead of pasta stars. I use the shirataki noodles found fresh in the deli case. I don’t know if they even come dried. All that’s necessary to prepare them is to rinse thoroughly with water. I chop mine before putting them in the soup so that’s it’s easier to ladle into bowls. My grocer only carries shirataki spaghetti and shirataki fettucine, if there were something smaller I would use it. Shirataki noodles are basically no-carb and so mentally it evens out the bread crumbs in the meatballs. Just sayin’.
Anyway, because I’m not “cooking” pasta in the soup, I do not use nearly as much liquid. I’ll give you the recipe the way I make it, but you should explore Chena Girl and Contessa, too.
Meatballs:
1 lb. chicken Italian sausage
2 T. milk
2/3 c. breadcrumbs
1/3 c. grated Parmesan
1 egg, beaten
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 T. parsley flakes
kosher salt and fresh pepper
Soup:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
3 carrots, diced
2 celery ribs, diced
4 c. chicken stock
1/2 c. dry white wine
5 oz. baby spinach
½ Tbsp. minced fresh dill
8 oz. shirataki spaghetti (chopped into 2″ sections or so to make ladling easier)
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Meatballs: combine all ingredients. Drop by rounded spoonfuls on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. You should have approximately 35 meatballs. Bake for 30 minutes, or until golden brown.
Soup: on medium-low heat, add the olive oil to a large soup pot. Cook the onions, celery, and carrots for 8-10 minutes or until soft. Add the stock and wine and bring it to a boil. Turn down to a simmer for a few minutes. Add spinach and dill, spaghetti, and meatballs and cook for about a minute or so to heat through.
Ladle the soup into bowls and top with a little extra grated Parmesan.
This is a hearty soup, especially good served with a crusty bread. It’s easy to make while camping or at the cabin.
Fry 1 lb Italian sausage, 1 chopped onion, 2 chopped celery stalks, 2 chopped carrots, 1 Tbsp. lemon peel in a large pan until the sausage is cooked through.
Stir in 1 quart (or liter) of chicken broth, 2 15-oz. cans black beans, drained, and 2 Tbsp lemon juice. Add salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for 45 minutes. Serve.
Foods Passion 