Soups & Stews

It's simple to make and you can add it to so many different things!

INGENIOUS!

​Keep a few containers of homemade soup in the freezer and suddenly the long winter ahead doesn't seem so bad after all. Here's how to make sure you get the best results.

Chili is a very personal thing, but there are a few basic universal chili-making dos and don'ts.

All the tools you need to ensure you chili tastes just right.

And it takes just seconds.

Six more reasons to add a box of chicken broth to your grocery list.

Do you know?

"The whole tail will just loosen and come right out!" she said in the video.

Sometimes in the middle of making a soup, I decide that creamy is what I crave. Yes, definitely. A creamy, spoon-clinging soup to savor slurp by slurp while I catch up with my Netflix queue. It’s time to travel off-recipe into improvisation territory: creamy soup or bust! As I discovered, there are ways to thicken soups and one of them is by using pantry staples like flour or ground nuts.

You'll always have meals ready to go with these tips.

A member of the kelp family, kombu is a seaweed that makes for a versatile pantry ingredient, providing dishes with umami flavor, nutrients, and minerals. While most kombu comes from Hokkaidō, Japan, it is also cultivated in Korea, where it is known as dashima, and China, where it is known as haidai. (Maine kelp is similar and can be substituted for kombu.) Dried kombu can be used to make Japanese dashi (a savory broth), added to beans to make them more digestible, and eaten in salads.

February is Soup Month at The Kitchn, so I thought that I would look at some great soup and wine combinations. Traditionally, soup has been considered a difficult course to pair with wine. The reason for this is texture. Pairing liquid with liquid simply did not seem like an appealing combination. Well, as we all know, there is soup and there is soup.So don’t let incumbent ideas about food pairing stop you from enjoying a glass of wine with your next soup dish.

Rich, long-simmered stews are as satisfying to eat as they are to make. It’s all about building layers of flavor and then stepping away from the stove to let the low heat gently do its magic. You don’t need a recipe – just a few basic guidelines will help create the perfect stew!Note for Vegetarians – Sure, you can make stew, too! Instead of meat, try adding about a pound of mushrooms and a pound of potatoes.

This trick for making soup toppers is so unbelievably easy!

So similar, yet so very different.

Warm up with a bowl tonight.

This gets the beef extra tender without letting the veggies fall apart.

It's 100% worth the extra work.

All you need is a slotted spoon.

It's pantry-friendly, too.

Stock is one of the kitchen's greatest magic tricks. Here are the five rules to this magic.

Sure, it’s a cliche. But when October rolls around, I want pumpkin. No, not the flavor of pumpkin spice, but actual pumpkin. I love pumpkin soup, pumpkin chili, even pumpkin muffins, and it seems more festive to buy a fresh one than pick up a few cans of purée. But peeling pumpkin is a pain, or it was until I learned a few tricks. Sadly, I know of no better way to remove the seeds than to just dig in to the slimy insides with my bare hands.

Homemade soup is easy, and it’s always comforting. Whether or not my kids reach for the occasional can of soup, I want them to know how to make an economical, easy version from scratch, so they can have a healthy meal any day of the week. I like to make my own stock. (True story: I recently requested my fish in a restaurant be decapitated before it was cooked, so I could take home the raw fish head to make stock. Delicious!

The rich, golden-hued liquid will upgrade your soups, risottos, sauces, and more.

Nope, it's not cocoa powder.

It's perfect for adding flavor and keeping proteins from drying out.

This "secret" ingredient is actually centuries old.

This chicken soup had the most payoff for the time and effort involved.

Even if you've made beef stew in your Dutch oven or slow cooker, you're gonna want to read this.

We've teamed up with chefs, cookbook authors, and our own Kitchn crew to share a globe-trotting adventure highlighting soups from across the globe.

Sometimes you've got to make really good store-bought broth into really great homemade soup.

Whenever I make homemade stock I always take the approach of keep half for now and freeze the other half for later. Homemade stock is a truly wonderful staple to keep on hand, but it doesn’t have a very long shelf life. If you’re not using the entire batch immediately, the best way to get the most out of your stock is by freezing it in ice cube trays. Ice cube tray size can vary, but standard trays usually hold one ounce in each well (this is the same as 2 tablespoons).

Skip the canned soup routine.

Love French onion soup more for the topping than for the soup itself? Look no further for some inspiration to French onion-ify your other favorite soups.Think of this soup topper as a tasty lid that’ll make any soup beneath even more delicious. With the addition of bread and cheese, any soup transforms into an instant meal, and the process is just about as easy as it gets. The options are endless for which soups make the best candidates, too.

We space and budget challenged cooks can’t own every new gadget and every stunning serving piece. Instead, we have to challenge ourselves to cook beautifully with the basics.A couple of times this winter, we’ve wanted to put a tureen of celery root soup or minestrone in the middle of the table along with some good bread and butter and call it a meal.

In all their many forms, noodle soups are comforting and seriously delicious. But sometimes they can also prove a little confusing, especially when it comes to choosing the best type of noodle to add to your soup. Pasta or egg noodles? Soba or rice noodles? Wonder no more! Here’s your guide to picking the best noodles for any type of soup. While similar to traditional pasta, these noodles contain a higher egg-to-wheat ratio. There are two varieties of egg noodle.

In addition to the rich broth, the most satisfying element of beef pho is the meat layered in the bowl before serving. Added raw, the thin strips of beef are cooked when the boiling broth is ladled into the bowl. Choose wisely, though, because not just any cuts of beef will do. These inexpensive cuts of beef celebrate pho’s humble roots, bring just the right blend of fat and flavor, and are, most importantly, quick to cook in the broth.

In a world full of chili recipes, you have a choice to make on cold, winter nights. Do you choose to get visibly upset at the idea of beans in your chili (you purist!), or do you pine after that sweet and saucy bowl of Cincinnati chili? Now, there’s no wrong way to stuff your face with chili, but it does, in fact, say a lot about you as a person. What is your favorite kind of chili? Make your choice, then read on to see what this important life decision says about you as a person.

Soups, more than most other dishes, can carry an air of mystery. Through the magic of browned meat, long simmering, and aromatic herbs, a good soup provokes the question, “What went into this, anyway?” And sometimes you, as the cook, will be pleasantly perplexed as to how much taste was created from a simple mix of vegetables. Has this ever happened to you?

As we talked about last week, a creamy and rich béchamel sauce is a super handy thing to know how to make. Just look at all these ways we use it in our cooking!• “Cream of…” Soups – Thin out the béchamel with a little more milk or some good stock and mix it with anything from mushrooms to chicken. You’ll never look at canned condensed soup the same way again.• Lasagna – Béchamel is the glue that binds the layers of a classic lasagna.

Making a satisfying soup on a weeknight is a delicious possibility, as long as you’ve got a good game plan. Sometimes that’s just as simple as having a good trick or two up your sleeve, like pre-chopping the vegetables ahead of time or gussying up a can or box of pre-made soup, and sometimes it means using your slow cooker. Here are 10 smart strategies to help you make weeknight homemade soup a reality.

We live in a time when most grocers have at least one aisle dedicated to internationally sourced ingredients, and we can get hard-to-find ingredients delivered to our front doors with ease. So you’d probably be successful at tracking down most of the ingredients you need for traditional beef pho between those two sources, but I urge you to make a visit to your local Asian grocer before beginning your pho journey. If you want to try out pho at home, here’s what you’ll need.

Maybe your stock was unusually salty, or too much water boiled off, or you simply added one pinch of salt too many — however it happened, it’s happened: your soup is too salty. What’s the best way to fix it? And how can you prevent it from happening next time? Here are some strategies for fixing an overly salty soup: • Dilute it: The easiest fix is to add more water or stock, if your stock isn’t too salty in the first place.

myskinnygardenmyskinnygarden The best thing I’ve found so far is reusing my Ball canning jars. I make the soup and immediately fill the jars and refrigerate them. They are a little heavier to carry in my lunch bag but all I need to do is take the lid off and heat the jar of soup in the microwave. Working great for me and I’m happy to get some use out of all those canning jars I don’t normally use during winter months. We think this is a great idea.

Despite its name, poultry seasoning has many uses beyond chicken and turkey dishes. We like using this classic herb and spice blend to boost the flavor of vegetable soups.Whether you make your own or buy a it from a store, the basic ingredients in poultry seasoning are usually dried sage and thyme, which give the blend an aromatic, woodsy flavor. Other ingredients might include marjoram, rosemary, celery seed, and black pepper.

We’re big proponents of bringing your lunch to work; it’s almost always cheaper and healthier. But when we don’t, we frequently visit Hale and Hearty. We usually come away with soup plus some recipe ideas…Hale and Hearty has more than a dozen soups on the menu every day.

We recently attended a dinner party at the home of Abby from AT: Los Angeles. From the vegetable terrine to the crème brûlée, everything was beautifully presented and delicious. But it was the starter that really made an impression on us. While we were sipping the tomato soup, Abby revealed that it contained a secret ingredient…Vanilla! It wasn’t an intentional secret ingredient; actually, it was more of happy accident.

We’ve known for a long time that adding cheese rinds to soups and stews adds depth to your dish. But have you thought of making a stock with your rinds? You can use it in place of chicken or vegetable stock or broth and we guarantee you’ll love the results.

With all the slow-cooking, slow-simmering recipes we’re doing these days, we inevitably find ourselves close to bedtime with a fresh pot of soup still steaming hot on our counter. Here’s a way to quickly get that soup to cool enough to stick in the fridge so you can carry on with the rest of your life!Fill a plastic bottle about 3/4 full with water and leave it in the freezer for several hours until completely solid.

Those are the ingredients for Sara Kate’s Fridge-Clearing Avocado Soup. Maybe not the most seasonal group of ingredients in the middle of February, but it exhibits a very good (and healthy) idea for making creamy, silky soup. The finished product is below… You may only think of yogurt as a garnish, something to plop on top of a soup or stew and slowly stir in as you eat. And it does make a good garnish (we’ve done that here and here).

Do you drink V8? We like it in savory smoothies, the occasional bloody mary, and lately, soup! Thanks to a tip in a recent issue of Cook’s Illustrated, we’ve started substituting a cup or two of this all-vegetable juice to the broth in our soups, stews, and braises this winter.Unsatisfied with the weak tomato flavor they were getting from supermarket tomatoes this time of year, the cooks of Cook’s Illustrated thought to add a dose of V8 to their recipe for Hearty Minestrone.

This is one of the tools that restaurants use to cool down huge pots of stock and other hot foods when they’re not going to be used right away. With all the soup we’ve been making lately, we’re thinking about picking one up for ourselves!Using an ice paddle cools food down much more quickly than simply letting them cool on their own or even setting them over an ice bath.

Inferior though it may be to homemade stock, the truth is that we depend on store-bought broth to help us with a lot of our quick weeknight dinners. Here are a few easy ways to amp up the flavor in those cans to give us some truly tasty meals.If you have time, let the broth simmer on its own with some of the add-ins below for at least fifteen minutes before using it. We often do this while we’re prepping the rest of the ingredients for the dish.

Since it’s Soup Week it seems like an appropriate time for a confession. I Sarah Trover am not a huge fan of soup. I’d much prefer a hearty bowl of stew or chowder, something with a little body, instead of a thin broth-based meal. That isn’t to say that thin or creamy soups aren’t tasty, but when given the choice, I’ll go for thick over clear and thin every time. Because of that, potato starch is my go-to thickener and — dare I say — my soup BFF.

This is where you want to use that really fantastic bottle of extra-virgin olive oil that you’ve been saving for a special occasion. Trust us, a little drizzle of that liquid gold in each bowl will take your soup to the next level. Have you ever tried this?You don’t need much. Just a tablespoon of oil perfumes the hot soup and adds a special richness to each bite. The floating oil looks so fancy as you bring the soup to the table, too!

Q: I bought some Thai culinary stock last weekend at the grocery store. I’m not exactly sure what vegetarian dishes I can create with it.Does anyone have an idea?Sent by ChrisEditor: Readers, have any of you ever tried this? We think it must be good for soup and stews — any suggestions?Next question?

Q: I made a soup last week with lentils and split peas, but I don’t know how old the split peas were. They smelled musty, but I only realized it was the legumes after I had started cooking the soup. Were my lentils or peas bad? Will I get sick if I eat the soup?Sent by CharlotteEditor: No, I don’t think you need to worry about getting sick from old lentils or other legumes, though I would recommend rinsing them thoroughly before cooking to wash away any dust.

Even though I stockpile chicken bones and vegetable scraps in a bag in my freezer, I never seem to make enough roast chicken to support my homemade stock habit. But this weekend a friend shared a tip for a budget-friendly way to make chicken stock whenever you want. She discovered that our fancy neighborhood butcher shop sells chicken carcasses for $1.99 per pound.

Our family had a very low key, perfect New Year’s Eve. The five of us headed to Edisto Island, with my mother in law joining us for one night, for a gloriously reclusive New Year. We picked up a bushel of oysters and steamed them in the oven, toasting 2014 hours before midnight, when only two of us remained awake. The next morning, we had leftover oysters. Even in a minimalist vacation rental kitchen, oyster stew is easy.