Soup There It Is 🥣

My love affair with a meal in a bowl

a trio of soups from Chrissy Teigen’s first cookbook

I really love soup. The “good soup” sound on TikTok was stuck in my head all winter last year. I got a beanie with “soup mode” embroidered on it. I started a soup group (shoutout to my Deep North Soup Group pals!) on Instagram with my friends near and far that also love soup in the fall of 2020. The reason I asked for an immersion blender for Christmas a few years ago was to use it for blending soup, and the reason we recently got a blender was to blend soup in larger quantities. I think about how a soup will look in a bowl vs. a blate (a bowl/plate), and what color dinnerware will complement the colors of the soup best. My brain basically IS soup for much of the year.

That is for good reason. It is freezing and harsh most of the year up here in the Deep North, and soup is versatile, nourishing, filling when it needs to be, and is my favorite meal. Soup has been there for me on the coldest days - literally and emotionally - when I didn’t have much to give in the kitchen or much in my bank account, and when I was deeply sad. It provides nonjudgmental comfort and warmth. I’ve joyfully eaten three different kinds of soup in one afternoon with my cookbook club (pictured above), and luxuriated in the process of making a soup that takes all afternoon. It is, dare I say, a perfect meal. 

Almost every culture I can think of has a soup recipe so no matter your cravings or ingredients on hand, there is a soup for you. In eastern Europe and Russia, fellow Deep North places, they have borscht. Italy has minestrone soup and wedding soup. Vietnam has pho, and Japan has ramen and miso soup. Gazpacho comes from Spain, and Mexico has pozole and tortilla soup. Thailand has khao soi and tom yum. Hot and sour soup and wonton noodle soup come from China. India has mulligatawny soup. Korea has kimchi jjigae. Fiskesuppe (fish soup) comes from Norway. Southern states in the U.S. have gumbo, and the U.S. has various chowder soups (clam, lobster, corn). There’s matzo ball soup, vegetable soups, and stews. The human species really has a thing for soup, don’t they?

clockwise from top left: ramen, coconut lentil soup, white bean and meatball soup, kimchi jjigae

Growing up, my family had Campbell’s chicken noodle soup out of the can, beef stew, and canned tomato soup with grilled cheese. But since we were on-the-go most of the time, with all four of us doing some combination of activities after school and in the evenings, I don’t have many memories of eating soup. It’s not a food that is friendly for eating in the car or church entryway or in the hallways of a school between swimming and play practice. 

My first few years at college I ate most of my meals at the dining hall, but when my friends started living in houses nearby, I learned cheap, yummy tricks for soup making that I still use in a pinch. My friend Sam taught me to add a spoonful of brown sugar to chili, and my friend Erik just combined a can of black beans, a sprinkle of frozen corn, and a jar of salsa with some broth for his version of chili. A lot of us were vegetarians at that time so looking back we made a lot of chili - ha! 

Once I got into my cooking era early in our marriage, I cooked nearly every soup in the cookbooks we loved, splattering and staining pages as I perfected what “salt to taste” means for our palettes. I learned new techniques like roasting squash and root veggies on a sheet tray or in the pot first to get some browned caramel-y flavors in your soup. We mastered the art of freezing leftovers for lunches, and cycling through our freezer to make sure we were eating things before they got freezer burned. I have so much more to say about soup: what specific soups have given me and taught me, how to choose the right soup for mood and convenience level, how to vary up beloved recipes, and more. I’m thinking this will have to be a series every so often in the colder months. Thoughts?

via the internet

My Go-To Soups for Fall & Winter

Here are my timeless winners for the bulk of soup season. All of these freeze well (except for the tortellini soup). So if you make one of these a week and freeze your leftovers, you will eventually have a menu of 10ish soups in your freezer at a moment’s notice.

• Butternut Squash Soup from Chrissy Teigen’s first cookbook Cravings - Google this one or look on Pinterest if you don’t have her cookbook

• Creamy Tortellini Soup and Spicy Peanut Soup with Sweet Potatoes + Kale from Pinch of Yum

• Ina Garten’s Potato Leek Soup

• Julia Turshen’s Coconut Lentil Soup from her cookbook Small Victories

• Dilly Bean Stew from Alison Roman

• Chicken and Wild Rice Soup from Plays Well with Butter

• My friend, Helen’s grandma’s Avgolemono Soup (sorry no link for this one!)

• Vegan Pumpkin Soup from Cookie and Kate

• Eric Kim’s Budae Jjigae from NYT Cooking or any of his jjigae recipes from his cookbook Korean American

• Classic Russian Borscht from Natasha’s Kitchen

*Spring soups are a whole different ball game so we will ignore those until 2024.

my favorite tortellini soup

Soup Tips

These are the best things I learned from my soup group pals that I still use to this day: 

• Use Souper Cubes (silicone trays) to freeze leftover soup

• For fast stocks, use bullion cubes OR the bullion paste

• Instant pots and Crockpots are a busy person’s bff when it comes to soup

• If the soup has pasta, it will absorb water and plump up with refreezing and thawing so you may have to add water upon reheating

• Get yourself a friend with a NYT Cooking subscription who can screenshot you recipes

some sort of beefy, cabbage and root veggie soup I made last year

Soup can be as cheap as buying a can of it, or fancy schmancy with ingredients found only at the rich people’s grocery store, or anywhere in between, and I love it for that reason.

Things I Like

• Funky tiny lamps have my heart right now and have claimed a lot of space on my Pinterest boards lately too

• Spook-ifying thrift store paintings trend

• My ROLLS ROLLS ROLLS project where I bake a different cinnamon roll variation every weekend. So far I’ve done chai, brown butter, mocha, and pumpkin rolls. 

• Vintage dish/towel patterns as tattoos

• Moscow on the Hill in St. Paul. If you’re local to the Twin Cities, I highly recommend it! I went there for a happy hour with my friend and loved it so much that I took my husband there for our anniversary. 

May your week be gentle and may you eat well. 🌲🥣