It’s soup season! And with that, comes the season of buying a whole bag of carrots to use two, and a carton of cream just for a quarter cup. Making all these delicious soups can sometimes leave us with excess ingredients that we don’t know what to do with.
In this post, I’ll give you a basic soup recipe to build a yummy dish with whatever you have in your fridge! Use up your extra ingredients and get experimental. Maybe you’ll even create a new family favorite.
Basic Ingredients
If you’ve made plenty of soup recipes before, you’ll probably recognize the basic ingredients that are in one. These are pretty essential, and generally you’ll miss them if you don’t have them.
- Broth: This can be homemade, store-bought, or even a little bit of bullion in water. Whatever you have will work, as long as you have some way of making a tasty liquid.
- Vegetables: Most any vegetable will work in a soup. Garlic and Onion are pretty much a must. Some vegetables have strong flavors, so you might think about how they will taste together, but things like carrots and celery add very little flavor and can add a bit more volume and nutrition if you have a large family or picky eaters. Remember that potatoes will also add more of a starchy thickness to your soup.
- Protein: This can be meat, beans, legumes, or even left out. Your preference and whatever you have on hand.
- Herbs and spices: This is where the magic happens! Choose herbs and spices that pair well with your other ingredients. Remember that you need less of a dried herb than its fresh form, but both can be used in soups.
- Fat: Any fat can be used, and you’ll only need a few tablespoons. This is just for searing meats, cooking vegetables, and melding the flavors together. If you have a few options, choose which one best suits the other ingredients.
- Optional: flour, cream, sour cream, milk, or other items for thickening: Flour can be used to make roux, cornstarch for a slurry, or even just adding cream or sour cream will do the trick. These are completely optional, but are delicious still.
These are pretty basic groups, but you’ll see almost all of them in every soup recipe out there! If you have all of these things already, you can skip a trip to the store and whip up a soup in no time.
Customizable Soup Recipe
This base recipe for a soup will roughly guide you through the process of making a soup. I haven’t included instructions on chopping, slicing, grating, etc. because I’ll leave that up to your own preferences.
- Start by adding a few tablespoons of your chosen fat to the bottom of a large pot. You don’t need much, but try to choose a fat that goes well with the flavor you’re going for.
- If you’re adding meat to this soup, add it to the pot now, and sear it until it’s almost fully cooked. No need to worry about cooking through at this point. After searing, remove the meat from the pot and set aside.
- Next, add your vegetables, including garlic and onion, if you’d like to cook those down first, you absolutely can, but not required. Cook the vegetables until soft and fragrant.
- Add your dried herbs and spices and allow those flavors to meld with the vegetables for a few minutes.
- Add your broth of choice and possible beans or legumes. Bring this all to a boil, then down to a simmer for 20-30 minutes, depending on the ingredients.
At this point, it’s time to decide how you’d like to serve this soup.
- If you want a very traditional soup, simply chop or shred your meat however you’d like and stir it back into the pot.
- For a smooth soup, use an immersion blender to blend the veggies and broth to your liking, then follow it up by adding your meat back in.
- If you still want the chunky veggies, but want to add some thickness, make a slurry or a roux and stir it in. Allow it to simmer a bit longer after you’ve added the meat.
And there you have it. You’ve made a brand new soup!
There are so many recipes out there, but knowing the basic soup process will give you confidence in the kitchen, and help you recreate favorites at home.
Let me know what ingredients you pulled together to fill bellies this week! If you’ve created something delicious, I’d love to try it too! Tag me in an Instagram post or leave it in a comment here.
Until next time,
Rebekah
