Making Real Soup
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When the north wind blows the leaves from the trees, thoughts of warm steaming bowls of soup bring great comfort.

Soups have often been about necessity, combining the food ingredients on hand with lots of water to help stretch the food supply. A bowl of warm broth is always more filling than a few bites of food.

Soups have become our comfort food, too. We want them when we’re chilly, stressed, or laid low with the cold or flu. And this is true the world over. Every ethnic group has their own version of chicken noodle soup, as well as other comfort soups from borscht, oxtail, or mussel, to hot and sour.

Soups today are a bit different than they were in the past. In the world of woodstove cookery, soups often began in the fall and lasted until spring, just as depicted in The Bone People by Keri Hulme, set in New Zealand:

The soup is greenish. The taste is peppery, yet reminiscent of chicken.
“What’s in this?”
“Eels mainly. The odd bird. Greens.”
“O,” he blows cautiously into his cup….“What kinds of birds? Greens?”
The old man dips a piece of bread into the soup. “As I remember, it started with a duck, and six potatoes. Then one night I added two silverbelly eels. After that, more water, a pigeon, cresses, puwha [edible weeds], more potato, o the soup grew.”
Shaking his head, laughing silently.
“What’s funny? It sounds a good way to build a soup.”

For some reason that passage always makes me salivate. It must be because they’re talking about ‘real’ soup. Me, I grew up on tinned and dry-packaged ones, so it wasn’t until I worked in good restaurants that I learned how to make real soups, savoury and tasty, by first making stock from bones and vegetables, straining, and then adding the main ingredients.

Some of my favourite restaurant-experienced made-from-scratch soups are Red Pepper Velouté Soup, Manhattan and New England Clam Chowder, Steak and Potato Soup.

Soups, marvelous soups!

A Chicken Soup Recipe from World Famous Recipes to help heal what ails you.

World Famous Chicken Soup Recipe

One whole chicken
1 gallon water (enough to cover chicken)
1 onion cut in quarters
3 garlic cloves
1 inch of ginger root shredded
2 teaspoons salt
1 pound new potatoes
4 large carrots cut in one inch slices
2 stalks celery cut in one inch slices
1 can baby corn

Directions:

1. Combine chicken, water, onion, garlic, ginger, and salt in a large stockpot and bring to a boil. (Crockpot can be used but times are longer)
2. Simmer for 30 minutes to 1 hour skimming off fat as needed.
3. Test chicken with a fork to determine when it is tender and fully cooked.
4. Remove the chicken and shred it, removing bones, fat, skin, and gristle.
5. Strain chicken broth.
6. Add vegetables and chicken to chicken broth and bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes or until potatoes are done.

If you, like me, grew up on the packaged deal, don’t let that stop you from enjoying homemade soups. They’re actually incredibly easy and satisfying to make. So toss out the bouillon cubes and the canned broth and plunk a chicken into that soup pot!

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Photo Credit: ‘Duchessa’
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