Well, here we are back in the deep freeze. There are not many things you can look forward to when the temperature drops below freezing and stays there for several days. But there is one thing about the coldest winter day that is always welcome -- homemade soup like Grandma used to make.
Soup making sort of went by the wayside back when pretty much any kind of soup you wanted became readily available in cans, and for much less money than it cost to purchase the ingredients and make that soup yourself.
However, if you are a gardener and end up with baskets of vegetables at the end of the summer that must be processed and stored, soup is one of your staple foods. You can make several types of soup in one day, store them in freezer safe containers in pretty much any amount you prefer, and have healthy and delicious hot meals for you family all winter long.
As a child, I did not like eating soups my grandmother made because there always seemed to be small bones in it. The reason for this is that most women of that generation made their soup stock by placing bones, skin and other scraps from a cooked turkey or chicken in a pot of boiling water. Even if you strain out the bones, you are still going to have some small ones slip through the strainer.
A better way to make stock, and the way recommended by most of today's chefs, is to boil whole uncooked chickens or turkey breasts. This process is called poaching, and not only provides the stock, but also the cooked meat for the soup. You can also poach beef or pork cuts, with or without the bones. The process is the same for all meats. Or, if you prefer or if the soup has a vegetable base, you can simply boil vegetables until they are fully cooked and have a vegetable only stock.
Whatever stock you are using, you will need to add the meat (I will use chicken for all of my examples because that is the stock I prefer), season the water with salt, pepper and a bundle of spices, and add one whole onion cubed, two or three carrots cut in large pieces, two or three ribs of celery cut in large pieces, and a couple of garlic cloves. I use sage, thyme and either marjoram or oregano for my herb bundle, but you may prefer to use bay, rosemary or even fennel in yours, depending on your own taste.
Boil the mixture until the chicken is completely cooked inside and out and no blood is visible when you cut into it. Times will vary but you need to allow one-two hours for this. Alternately, you can simply pour packaged stock and water into a pot at a ratio of two-thirds stock to one-third water (again, this is to taste, you might prefer more or less water). Once the meat is poached, remove the meat and cut it off the bone into bite sized pieces or cubes. Place a colander over another pot and strain the vegetables out of the broth. Pour the strained broth back into the pot, and you are ready to add your soup ingredients.
I don't like to waste the cooked vegetables, so I will generally cut those up and use them in the soup. The herb bundle has done its job and can be discarded.
If you add all cooked ingredients back into the broth, all you have to do is heat everything through and you have your soup. As you can see, soup can be made in the space of about 20 minutes start to finish if you start with all pre-cooked ingredients and packaged stock. (If you use packaged stock, you might want to add seasonings with your other ingredients. Again, I add salt, pepper, sage, thyme and oregano to just about anything, but you need to add whatever you feel needs to be added to get the desired flavor.)
If you are starting with a raw chicken and veggies, you will need to cook everything until the vegetables are tender and cooked through.
Most soups taste better, especially to young children, if they contain some sort of carb filler. If you are going to be making soups from scratch on a regular basis, you need to keep rice, noodles and dry or canned beans in your pantry or canisters. Instant rice is good if you need to make a meal quickly, but is gets mushy and nasty if you try to use it in soup. I keep a mix of wild and long-grain brown rice, and cook it up right before I am ready to add it to the soup. You need to cook it completely before adding it. Beans can be cooked before hand, or simply added from cans if you prefer, and will do fine. It is not a good idea to add dry beans to a soup, because it takes much longer to cook them than any of the other vegetables and you will end up overcooking everything else in the process.
Noodles, however, can be added as the last ingredient to the soup, whether you are using precooked or raw ingredients. The noodles will cook up perfectly in the stock in about 20 minutes, and will have a wonderful flavor. I prefer thin egg noodles for my soups, but you might prefer an Italian pasta such as macaroni.
There are soup recipes available online for every type of soup you can think of, from chicken broth to cream of mushroom to carrot and squash soups. And nothing you can prepare for yourself or your loved ones will be more nutritious or warming on a cold winter's day.
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