The Infinite Joy of Flexible Soups
I mean, they're ENDLESS
The Capsule Pantry in one sentence: Save money, time, and food waste by adopting a Capsule Pantry approach — a small number of ingredients that form the basis of thousands of different, highly flexible recipes.
I’m in the land of soup, and I don’t hate it.
Here in Romania, it’s called ciorba and it’s everywhere. I’ve been chowing down on Hungarian-style goulash, chicken soup with semolina dumplings and soups packed full of beans, vegetables and potatoes. I’ve avoided the tripe soup (too rich for my blood I’m afraid) but pretty much everything else goes straight in my gob.
It’s March which means in much of the northern hemisphere, soup is still very much on the menu. And there probably isn’t a more Capsule Pantry-friendly type of dish.
It’s just so flexible.
Mark Bittman recently wrote The Four Truths of Easy, Flexible Soups and point number one was:
You’ve already got whatever you need.
That’s especially true if your pantry roughly follows TCP storecupboard list.
So. It’s time to tackle soups, TCP-style.
First, there are four rules to making banging soups
#1 Most great soups start with a base of onion and garlic.
#2 Roasting vegetables changes everything.
#3 Don’t skimp on the extras - spices, aromatics, herbs, nuts or cheese.
#4 Add texture, always.
Here’s an example of what not to do. My mother, bless her, is not a good cook. She makes broccoli soup on the regular. My dad doesn’t like pureed soups so she overcooks small pieces of broccoli and potato in vegetable stock and serves it up as is.
Here’s what she could do to elevate her broccoli soup using those four rules:
#1 Make the base by frying onion and garlic.
#2 Roast the broccoli.
#3 Add blue cheese towards the end of cooking.
#4 Puree the soup until smooth then add croutons.
For me, point three and four are the most important. Don’t skimp on the extras and make sure you add texture. That is what elevates soup from boring-ass into something delicious. It’s where you can get creative.
Here are some incredibly flexible soup ideas using these four rules. I’m not going to give you specific measurements because, with soups, you don’t really need them. Go with what looks good.
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