So it's finally cold enough in my temperate town of San Francisco to again warrant (at least in my book) regular (weekly if not more frequently!) soup creations! Some of my friends find soup-making challenging -- but once you get the hang of it, there are very few easier, healthier, more satisfying meals.
If you want to really enjoy soup making, just be sure to have a few basics on hand. Then add in whatever veggies and meats you have in the house or find at the market, and with a few added ingredients you can make tons of wonderful soup combinations. Here are some of the key ingredients I'd recommend having on hand (all can be shelf stable so you can stock up):
- a stock base: I prefer a vegetable stock, but chicken is a wonderful option too -- and both work in almost every recipe. You can make this yourself or find good quality versions in most stores (I go for the cartons vs cans, organic if possible).
- fresh or canned tomatoes: when you're not doing a broth base (or even if you are), tomatoes are wonderful as a base or flavor accent for many soups. I prefer unsalted, peeled, seeded whole (organic if possible) tomatoes because they give me the most options for use (they can be pureed or chopped as needed)
- a dry white wine: this is a wonderful flavor boost often added early in the soup-making process when sauteeing the vegetables. This wine doesn't need to be expensive, a cheap sauvignon blanc or other drier varietal will do wonderfully.
- sherry cooking wine: here, I would go for a mid-priced option and - those labeled as "sherry cooking wine" in the vinegar section of your grocery store are a decent alternative but if you can find a mid-level sherry in the wine section I'd choose that first (you usually get more for your money this way -- in volume and quantity)
- vinegars: a few good ones such as balsamic and sherry vinegar
- a selection of fresh or dried herbs: if you have an herb garden, parsley, oregano, rosemary, and thyme are "standards" and easy to grow indoors in the winter. Dried herbs such as basil, thyme, oregano, rosemary, and marjoram are great options too. And remember -- you can always make substitutions -- it's hard to ruin a soup by mixing up the herbs and can often add a new and interesting twist!
- beans: especially if you are eating vegetarian (but regardless), these are a wonderful and important component of many soups (especially cold-weather soups). The easiest are canned varieties such as garbanzo, cannelini (white kidney), black beans. If you can plan ahead and have a bit more time, dried beans offer much more variety, are usually less expensive, and need only be soaked overnight and boiled for about 1 hour before soup-making. Some dried options (in addition to those above) that I love are cranberry beans, white runner beans, fava beans, black garbanzo beans, and flageolet beans.
A few autumn-inspired (i.e., flavorful, fall ingredients -- but not quite as hearty as I'll be looking for in the middle of winter!) soups I made this past week (I was inspired by the fresh beans still available at the farmer's market!) are:
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