Cold weather meals are basics during the winter season. No matter where you live these easy soup recipes will fill your soup bowls with a warming meal.
The cold weather and our busy schedules during the holidays makes this the perfect season to take advantage of delicious, easy and quick soups that turn into terrific meals. In the culinary world there are two types of soups; the clear broth soups and thick soups. French cuisine classifies the clear as a bouillon and the thick as a consommé.
Table of Contents
Soup Stock
Clear broths are typically made by cooking a combination of your favorite or leftovers meats, bones and basic vegetables; an onion, carrot and celery in water, until; everything is tender. Bringing everything to a boil and then reducing to a simmer, brings out the natural flavors of the ingredients and creates your stock for the soup.
You can use beef, poultry and even the shells from seafood to make a stock that are the meager beginnings for a delicious dish. You need to remove the meat from the bones and drain the stock, setting the meat aside and discarding the bones, shells and vegetables cooked.
Clear Broth
Now comes the transformation of stock into broth, here you add the meat cooked with fresh vegetables and seasonings, nothing is discarded. Everything goes into a single pot and you’re on your way to a making a delicious meal.
You can add rice or small pastas into your soups for another texture; they will absorb some of the liquid in the soups, so if you have leftovers you may need to add more broth to the soup the next day. If you are a soup lover and enjoy a quick and easy dish without a lot of fuss this is your category.
Thick Soups
There is a second soup classification; depending on the how the soups are thickened another term as bisque will be used. This is where technique comes in and you can pick, which one works best for you. There’s the homemade styling that adds some flour to the liquid to thicken your broth or you can use a roux or even a béchamel sauce which gives the soup a richer flavor.
You can puree vegetables to thicken soups, add creams for delicious bisque and garnish. These thick soups really are simple to make, they do require an additional step because they need to be thickened, but I promise you that the extra step is worth the effort.
Here’s a collection of my own soup recipes that are healthy, delicious and easy to make.
- Chicken soup
- Ham soup that’s easy, simple and delicious
- Turkey soup with Thanksgiving turkey leftovers
- Butternut squash soup, Autumn Colors
- Simple Cheddar Cheese
- Lobster bisque – creamy texture filled with lobster
Enjoy!
