MAKING soup is almost as comforting as eating it, and having a pot of it simmering on the stove is one of my favourite parts of cooking at home. The delicious smells waft throughout the house, down the street or across the village, making it hard for anyone to resist.
Soups are also cheap to make as they use the cheapest bones and carcasses to create deep, earthy broths; the base of any good soup. The one-pot cooking style also makes it easy to use up leftover vegetables, rice or legumes to bulk out the soup to cater for big families or cheeky neighbours who’d prefer to let others do the hard work.
As we learned in part one of this series about pot cooking, the secret to the flavour and medicinal value of a good soup is in the bone broth, whether its beef, chicken, goat or fish. Vegetarian soups can be equally as tasty but there is nothing more rewarding than enjoying a bowl of hearty, deep flavoured meat soup that is not only filling but great medicine for the body. If you took the time to make your own homemade broth during the week, here are some of my cooking tips and kitchen secrets to help transform a clear broth into a thirst-quenching meal.
1. Double your recipe: It takes very little additional time to make a bigger batch of soup. Soup recipes are easy to make in larger quantities, you just add more ingredients, and are one of the most freezer-friendly dishes around. So double up on ingredients, grab a larger pot and make two meals instead of one. Freeze soups after they have been chilled overnight in the fridge. Soups will last up to two months in the freezer.
2. Sweat the vegetables: To make a good soup, you have to build flavours as you go. Vegetables such as onion, garlic, ginger, celery and carrots are called “aromatics” and are part of most soup recipes for this very reason.
Sautéing the aromatics in oil or butter is a first step of flavour-making. Be sure they’re cooked long enough to be softened and to release their flavours before moving on to the next step.
3. Consider the cook time of each ingredient: A tiny green pea will cook much faster than a chunk of carrot. Consider this and stagger the addition of vegetables in order of their softness so that they’re all finished cooking as close together as possible. A friend of mine was convinced that broccoli was yellow in colour as his mum used to overcook the green vegetable. In general, I put green vegetables in at the very end to retain their vibrant colour and nutrition.
4. Think spoon size: When chopping vegetables, think about how big you want them to be in the spoon. Even hearty, rustic soups should have well-chopped, reasonably sized vegetables. Greens such as spinach and cabbage also need to be chopped, or they will be difficult to eat.
5. Symmetry and shapes: They say we eat with our eyes first, and shapes play an important role on a plate or in a bowl of soup. I see a lot of local cooks like to dice vegetables up nicely into little squares, a legacy of Indian home cooking perhaps, but to me it makes them look like the store-brought frozen vegetables made by a machine. Try cutting each different vegetable or meat into different shapes and sizes so as to create a visual difference.
6. Use salt sparingly: Depending on the ingredients you’re adding, you don’t always know how much salt to add to the final stages of a soup. Many canned beans, vegetables and tomato paste are already salty. For this reason, save most of your seasoning until the end.
Taste and adjust with salt and white pepper as needed. Seasoning your soup well will mean the family won’t be tempted to add more salt at the table.
7. Take stock of your broth: When it comes to making clear, broth soups, the stock that you use is the most important ingredient. Poorly flavoured stock will ruin the entire pot of soup. For clear soups, homemade broth is always the best choice. If that isn’t an option for you or if you don’t have time to wait six-eight hours for a bone broth, you can buy ready-made stocks in the supermarkets.
An alternative is something I’ve used on Taste of Paradise; coconut bu water. Young coconut water is naturally sweet and thicker than water so makes a perfect liquid to add to a soup.
8. Simmer savvy: Once the soup has come to a boil, reduce to a simmer and make sure that it stays there. Boiling too vigorously will cause the vegetables to go mushy, while meat will toughen as the fibres tighten, and noodles will start to break down. Like any casserole, stew or good curry, soups need a little finesse and gentle heating to fully incorporate all the flavours.
9. Tips on noodle soups: When making noodle soups, I like to part-cook the noodles separately. Add the half cooked noodles as the final addition, and cook until tender, allowing the noodles to absorb the flavour of the soup.
Noodles that are cooked 100 per cent separately will lack flavour, taste floury and will break down when added. By partially cooking them you remove the excess flour and allow the noodles to continue cooking in the soup.
10. Cream in soup: Cream should be warmed before adding to soup to prevent curdling. Creamy soups are generally thicker than clear soups, but shouldn’t be too thick.
11. Milk in soup: Cold cow’s milk and coconut milk will curdle if added directly to a simmering soup, so it too should be warmed. Milk also doesn’t react well to boiling. If adding milk in place of cream to thicken the soup, take a moment to anticipate how much it will thin it out once added. When ready, remove soup from heat and stir in warm cows or coconut milk.
12. Serve it right: If you’re serving a hot soup, make sure it’s just that. There’s nothing worse than serving warm soup. The liquid, vegetables, meats and noodles should be piping hot as part of the enjoyment of eating a bowl of soup is cooling it with a few breaths.
13. Load it up: Just as McDonald’s serves “loaded fries” (fries with toppings), you can do the same with soups, which bulks them out to become more of a main meal than just a liquid appetiser. Loaded soups are more interesting to eat as there is something crunchy, meaty and contrasting with every spoonful. Many Chinese soup recipes use chunky carrot pieces, white radish (daikon) and green winter melons (white gourd) as additions to soups.
NEXT WEEK: We look at vegetarian broths and soups that use only vegetables to create a base stock, but are just as hearty and delicious as meat soups.
* Lance Seeto is the multi award winning chef at Mana Island Resort and Spa, culinary ambassador for Fiji Airways, the “Fijian Grown” campaign, and host of Fiji TV’s “Taste of Paradise”.
