Soup

The tomatoes are coming in by the bushel and that can only mean one thing: time for gazpacho! Whether you like it creamy or chunky or simply whirred in a blender, we have some ideas for punching up the flavor in your next batch.1. One Unexpected Ingredient – While the tomatoes are certainly the star of the show, adding one unusual fruit or vegetable can make things that much more interesting.

This is July, our Escapes Month, and so we asked a few blogger friends to share recipes and inspiration from faraway places and international cuisines. To kick it off, here’s Monika from Crumpets and Cakes, with a gazpacho inspired by Pedro Almodóvar!

A Chinese friend introduced me to this several years ago. In China, one of the most popular ways to use tonic herbs is to cook them in a soup with some chicken and sometimes a piece of fresh ginger. The herbs are believed to have tonifying and medicinal properties. Whether you believe these claims or not isn’t the point; this soup is delicious and nutritious.I buy these packages of herbs at Asian supermarkets.

We’re in the throes of deep-winter eating and there are definitely some days when it’s hard to find cooking inspiration in the produce section. This recipe, which was passed along by a friend, came just in time. The brilliant pairing of apples and parsnips is new and refreshing without being weird.Like most creamy soups, this soup is ridiculously easy to make and is very satisfying.

Seafood stock is one of those things I just can’t deal with in a can; fresh is so far superior. If you happen to have some shrimp, crab or lobster shells, the process is actually pretty easy. A fish stock using whole fish heads can be a bit messier, so I’m going to recommend you go the shellfish route. This stock is a great base for soups and stews and for cooking risotto. Cook it down as a base for pasta sauces and sauces to top other seafood dishes.

Nabe (cooking pot) mono (things, stuff) is a popular Japanese hot pot dish commonly served in the cold winter months. It is cooked table side and served communally. One thing I like about nabemono (in addition to its deliciousness!) is its versatility. There are so many different ingredients to choose from! During the cooking process, the broth becomes more flavorful. At the end, after all the ingredients are eaten, rice and egg are added to the seasoned broth and a porridge is made.

When I traveled in Japan last winter, one of my favorite dishes was matsutake dobin mushi. Matsutakes are wonderfully fragrant pine mushrooms, and dobin (“teapot”) mushi (“steamed”) is a soup steamed in a small teapot. Put these two words together, and you have matsutake dobin mushi, a nourishing mushroom soup.Each teapot holds an individual serving of soup.

Do you have any New Year’s cooking traditions? For some, the day brings black-eyed peas. With my boyfriend’s Korean family, we always sip dduk gook, a clean and soothing soup made with rice cakes, green onions, eggs, and seaweed. In addition to being a lucky New Year dish, dduk gook can also be a simple comfort food for any winter day.

This was one of the first traditional Italian meals my not-so-traditional Italian husband cooked for me back in our courtin’ days, and it remains one of my favorites. If you’ve been hankering after the heaps of local escarole at the market this time of year, this recipe is a great way to put them to use. Best part: This satisfying one-dish meal can be made in about 45 minutes.

Last week at the farmer’s market I bought a couple of rutabagas, and I knew I wanted to make soup with them. It’s been pretty chilly in San Francisco, perfect soup weather. I wanted to try something different, and while looking through my spice cabinet, I found the neglected jar of ground chipotle, and an idea formed in my head.This soup has a tangy turnip kick to it that pairs well with the spicy smoked chipotle.

Squashes have been showing up at the farmer’s markets and I’ve started buying a variety of them. They’re pretty cheap right now, and they can keep for a few weeks or a few months depending on whether you store them in the kitchen, a larder, or root cellar. There are just so many recipe options for squash, but I was in a soup mood, so I made this creamy squash soup with some of my home-canned roasted tomatoes.

My farm box delivered the most exquisite treasure a few weeks ago, the fairy tale-like Musquee de Provence Pumpkin. It’s been sitting on my dining room table and as much as I would love to keep it around for it’s voluptuous beauty, this pumpkin (which is technically a part of the squash family) is also quite delicious to eat.Read on for a favorite recipe!The flesh of the Musquee de Provence is deep orange and sweet.

We’re not sure we’ve ever had two minestrones that tasted the same—which makes sense, because minestrone is really meant to be a hodgepodge. This Italian vegetable soup usually has tomatoes, white beans, and greens, but recipes vary wildly. This one is a keeper. Hearty, rich, and packed with huge bunches (three kinds!) of greens.There is one big caveat, something we didn’t read carefully before starting on dinner last night.

My kitchen is overflowing with tomatoes, a ‘problem’ I truly love and appreciate! I’m making plans for tomato chutney and tomato jam and homemade ketchup. Canning projects are being penciled in and mason jars are collecting on my countertop. While BLTs and caprese salads abound, I’ve also got the taste for something different, something a little off the usual tomato path. Enter Jamie Oliver’s Tomato Consommé from his excellent book, Jamie at Home.

During the boiling days of summer, conversations among my Korean friends inevitably turn toward cravings for mul naengmyun, a dish of buckwheat noodles and cold, tangy broth topped with crisp cucumber, pear, and even a few ice cubes for extra chill factor.Although it originated as a North Korean wintertime dish, icy mul naengmyun has become a favorite hot weather meal. Unfortunately for vegetarians like myself, the broth is traditionally made with beef.

Many years ago my aunt gave me the Sunset Complete Vegetarian Cookbook, which contained a recipe for Finnish Summer Soup. It was an easy-to-make concoction that contained potatoes, onions, carrots, and green beans swimming in a creamy broth. Later on I learned this was known in Finland as kesäkeitto (don’t ask me how you pronounce that) and the Finns use more vegetables than the humble Sunset recipe did.

Earlier this week, a reader inquired about more uses for mung beans. Like several of you, my thoughts turned to Asian-style sweet mung bean soup.In Vietnam, sweet soups or puddings are known as chè. They may be served hot or cold in bowls, glasses, or over ice, and contain ingredients ranging from various kinds of beans to tapioca, glutinous rice, jellies, lotus seeds, and fruit. As a child, the scent of chè simmering on my family’s stove always had me jumping in excitement.

Soupe au pistou, the classic Provençal summer soup made with the freshest summer vegetables, shell beans, and pasta and finished with a dollop of basil pistou, will always carry a special place in my heart—it was the first dinner I ever ate with my French host family, on the balcony, the warm southern French sun on my back. It had never in my life occurred to me to eat soup in August, but I loved it.

We had some friends over for brunch last weekend and ended up with some leftover Bloody Mary mix. A LOT of Bloody Mary mix. It got us thinking: What can we make with the mix besides a cocktail?We’re dying to make Bloody Marys with some fresh, local tomatoes, but it’s not quite tomato season in the Midwest, so we stuck to the classic tomato juice recipe with a healthy dose of horseradish. The spicy tomato mixture makes a good base for a variety of dishes.

We like to think of this as our Stone Soup recipe. With a few basic ingredients and handful of lentils, we can make enough to feed and satisfy an entire crowd. While we can’t claim that this is the most authentic dal you’ll ever eat, we can promise a darn tasty meal! Take a look…Think of this recipe as a guideline. You can add more or less of any of the vegetables depending on what you have available and then adjust the spices as needed.

We don’t cook straight from scratch every night. In fact, there are many good products from the grocery store that can serve as the base for an easy, quick, and healthful meal. Take the soups at Trader Joe’s, for instance. Here we start with one of them, sweeten it up with some miso paste, add some soba noodles, and then top off the whole thing with just a handful of protein: spicy, crispy fried pork sausage with ginger, hot pepper, and garlic.

Two ingredients. That’s it. Well, if you want to be a stickler and count salt and pepper and a touch of olive oil, it’s five. OK, and water makes six. But the oil method is optional, so we’re back to five again but really, it’s two ingredients. Potatoes and leeks. Two of the most humble ingredients, plus the simple alchemy of simmering water, come together to make one utterly blissful, satisfying soup. Read on for the recipe.You can do anything to this soup.

Knoblauchcremesuppe! Say that eight times fast. It’s actually a very simple thing, and it’s quite deserving of our soup of the day. Creamy garlic soup, an Austrian favorite.This soup is so simple and easy: just some onion and garlic, a little flour and a little milk. Toasted bread croutons and ta-da! Dinner. Sweet and simple.• Get the recipe: Knoblauchcremesuppe (garlic soup) at Dinner for OneHave a great soup recipe? Email us here if you have a recipe and photo to share.

We just reviewed Anne Bramley’s lovely ode to winter cooking, Eat Feed Autumn Winter, and we promised you a full recipe from this splendid book. Well, since it’s Soup Month, we couldn’t pass up a chance for stew! Here’s a hearty, rich stew for the cold winter, with pork, sour cream, and one more unusual soup ingredient!This stew calls for sauerkraut — that tangy preserved cabbage. In this it rather reminded us of the classic Korean homestyle stew Soondubu jjigae.

This rich, spicy stew really hits the spot on cold winter nights. Chorizo, the Spanish pork sausage flavored with smoked paprika and chilies, has a spicy, robust flavor that just permeates this soup. Onions, garlic, thyme, and a little wine round out a broth that gets soaked up by the beans as they simmer. It was easy, quick, and incredibly satisfying on a cold night.

I was so inspired by all the responses to our very first Cupboard Challenge. A dip had never crossed my mind, nor a casserole. It’s amazing what you can do with four ingredients! In the end, I had about 15 minutes in the middle of a busy evening to find my own solution to the challenge. I was tempted to throw in some meat, but I decided to limit myself closely to these ingredients, with the addition of a few spices and some fresh thyme from a friend’s garden.

Peanut butter in soup? Really? Why yes, and it’s delicious!I am currently (as you read this) in Kenya, so I thought I’d leave you with at least one African recipe. This one is actually from the Moosewood cookbook, but it’s similar to many recipes on the African continent, where peanuts are often used to thicken soups and stews.This one is a deeply flavorful and spicy concoction of tomatoes, peppers, onions, curry powder and cayenne with a squeeze of lime.

Here’s a light, easy soup we recently enjoyed. It has all the fresh, delicate flavor of green leeks, with some garlic to punch it up. We added yogurt at the end and blended the soup smooth – the yogurt gave it a lovely tangy taste.Add some fresh crusty bread, new butter, and a green salad – maybe some good cheese too – and you have yourself a light meal.

We love a good soup or stew around here. But do you know what elevates soup into a whole cozy experience? Bread. Picture it: Spoon in one hand, a nice chunk of crusty bread in the other, ready to soak up all the flavors. We have so many warm and comforting soup recipes for chilly weather. And right here we have the absolute best breads to accompany those soups — like, soup soul mates. For real.

When I have a bunch of beets, one of my first thoughts is to make borscht. My borscht recipe is highly improvised and varies depending on my mood and what I have on hand, but it’ll get you started. Feel free to modify it for your own tastes.Kathryn’s Borscht Recipe1/2 lb. stew meat1 tbsp. flour1 tbsp. canola oil1/2 cup onion, diced2 large red beets, peeled.

Beef roasts were on sale this past week and we immediately thought STEW! We grabbed some onions, carrots, and celery and scurried home to make a big pot for dinner. This classic stew is full of vitamin-rich winter vegetables and chunks of lean meat in a warming broth.We didn’t follow any specific recipe as we put this stew together. Instead, we fell back on techniques like searing and braising to get flavorful and tender meat, and then we tasted as we went until the stew was just right.

Have you run out of Thanksgiving leftovers yet? Are you jonesing for something other than a turkey sandwich? Well, we have just the dish for you. No less comforting than turkey leftovers, but much fresher.Several years ago I came across this recipe at 101 Cookbooks — it’s a recipe for a rich soup made with coconut milk, vegetable broth, and a homemade spice paste, served with noodles.

Oden is a hearty Japanese stew that is cooked over several days and commonly served during cold winter months. It’s pretty easy to make and most ingredients can be found online or in Japanese supermarkets. It’s got a wonderful, savory flavor and contains an odd melange of ingredients like yam, taro, fish cake, hard boiled eggs, and mushrooms. Even though those food combinations might seem odd to Westerners, oden is a delicious dish that should be tried.

Rich and comforting, sweet potatoes are an ideal soup ingredient. Pairing them with tempeh and warm spices makes for an even heartier nutrition-packed meal. With a dollop of tangy yogurt and sprinkle of toasted pumpkin seeds, this stew can be served on its own or ladled over grains like quinoa for a satisfying fall dinner.

After reading Dana’s post earlier this week on cavolo nero kale, we started craving this favorite kale and sausage soup. Made even more satisfying with creamy white beans and potatoes, this is exactly what we need on these crisp autumn afternoons!We leave most of the ribs in our kale because we like the crunch it adds to the soup. If this isn’t your style, feel free to remove them.

Ratatouille is the quintessential late-summer dish. Not only does it make short work of extra produce, but it fills your kitchen with such a comforting and homey aroma that you might never want to leave!This isn’t exactly a quick weeknight recipe, but you can make a lot at once by doubling or tripling the recipe. Then you can eat leftovers the rest of the week or freeze ’em for later.

A version of this post was originally sent to our email subscribers on August 14th when tomato season was just starting for us. To receive Sara Kate’s weekly email, sign up in the column to the left or click here. Something tasty will arrive in your inbox every Thursday.When August (or September) brings on the steamy nights (or the cooling ones) and the tomato plants are (still) hot and heavy with ripe fruit, it’s time for gazpacho.

We had a bunch of carrots to use this week and were craving something Indian-inspired. It being Escapes Month and all, this soup from Bon Appétit sounded like the perfect recipe to celebrate far-flung locations and exotic flavors. Read on for our full review…The process of making this carrot soup is pretty much identical to our own technique for how to make soup from almost anything — sauté carrots and onions with some spices, pour in chicken broth, simmer, then purée.

When summer’s heat arrives, it’s hard to to think of preparing, much as less eating, hot food. We want something cool, quick and refreshing. We also want to use the fresh bounty that starts filling our grocery stores, farmer’s markets and back-yard gardens.This soup couldn’t be simpler: just cold buttermilk, a couple of chopped tomatoes and some basil. It can even be made with pesto, if opening a jar sounds easier than snipping a few basil leaves.

When held up against the fresh, mouth-watering produce at farmers markets, canned foods can definitely pale in comparison (to say the least). But they have their time and place too! This soup recipe makes use of a few of our canned pantry staples: black beans, diced tomatoes, and chicken broth. A single piece of bacon adds a subtle smoky flavor and silky texture. And sure, feel free to throw in a few seasonal ingredients to round things out!

Last week at the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market, we picked a bag of fresh stinging nettles.Nettles have a short growing season – they’re only available for a brief period in the spring, so they aren’t something we get to enjoy often. Some consider nettles a nuisance in the garden since they sting the skin at the slightest touch, but what most people don’t know is that nettles are a wonderful delicacy.Remember to use tongs or wear gloves while handling raw nettles.

Easy to whip up, and good hot or just lukewarm, with a bite of bread and some white wine. Maybe a book too? We like to eat soup when we read at table.Are you finding fresh sandy leeks at your market? We love them. What are you doing with yours?

Our favorite April Fools Day food tricks are more nice than naughty – the classic idea of serving foods that look like other foods. You’ve probably seen the meatloaf “iced” with mashed potatoes to look like a cake. Maybe you’ve even seen mashed potatoes and gravy in a parfait glass, mounded up to look like a butterscotch sundae.This year, we were looking for a new trick to truly fool our favorite people. Did we fool you?

It’s no secret that New Englanders have a particular reverence for chowders of all kinds, and on dreary winter days like those we’ve been getting, there’s nothing we crave more. And with good reason! Whether it’s a creamy oyster soup or a chunky broth of fish and potatoes, the simple pairing of starch with seafood restores the spirit and warms us to our toes.

Fortunately, onion soup is one of the easiest little dishes to prepare. And you don’t need very many things at all. Onion soup grew out of the constraints of poor people making do with what they had, and yet its simple preparation rewards with rich taste far beyond the sum of its parts. All you really need is an onion, some butter and broth, some wine if you have it – or water if you don’t – and salt and pepper.

This soup has an earthy sweetness and a comfortable heat that builds as you make your way through the bowl. It’s a basic recipe that can be adapted using any vegetable that takes well to puréeing. Try squash, potatoes or celery root. For the spice you can use regular cayenne, but if you have chipotle powder, its smokiness really adds to the soup. Garnish with whatever you like or nothing at all, but yogurt cools the heat and adds a nice tang.

There are lots of important races for Senate across the country today. At this point, there’s not much we can do other than get out there and vote. Whenever I feel helpless, it’s always good to get into the kitchen and make a big pot of something. What better something for today than Senate Bean Soup? It’s been a daily fixture on the menu of the US Senate Restaurant in Washington since the early 1900s.