How To Make Delicious Soup - Any Soup

Hey, readers! The month of May is always a little hectic around here, and I only just found some time to sit down and notice that we're in full swing of vegetative seasons. Soon, our tables will be full of wonderful vegetables, and our bodies will be better prepared to accept light meals.

Add to that the desire to look better in summer clothes, and we're heading straight to the only sensible conclusion:

Soup.

Soups are great, filling meals which are also much lighter and easier on your figure than most of other stuff we eat, especially if we have all those amazing vegetables at our disposal.

With that in mind, I've decided not to give you another specific recipe, but something more universal:

Tips For a Delicious Soup - Any Soup

1. Soup-creams... or not?

I love cream soups, and I will usually blend the everloving hell out of anything. My recipes show that plainly. In most cases, though, this step can be omitted without much harm to the dish.

However, you can also have the best of both worlds: just take out some of the vegetables before blending, and add them back in afterwards. You get a smooth taste and something to get your teeth into at the same time.

2. Stir-frying - your best friend

Most soups will be better if you stir-fry your vegetables first. This can be done in the pot you will use for boiling so no additional work required. Adding a little bit of oil makes soup richer, and various types of oil add their own taste to the mix. 

You can also control the taste you get by how much you fry them - lightly seared, or nicely crisp? Bell peppers soup and onion soup are two dishes that can be changed very much just by this simple technique.

3. Vegetable combinations

Recipes are always at hand nowadays, in books or on cooking blogs, but if you're on your own, you can still come up with something by following the simple rule of always combining a milder kind of vegetable with at least one spicier kind: leeks and potatoes, chili and tomatoes, onion with absolutely everything. Seriously, onion is like the wild card of cooking. Carrot is an interesting case, because carrots can be mildly sweet or very spicy depending on a variety.

4. Colour tricks

The only problem with vegetable soups is that sometimes you get a bland bowl of stuff that doesn't really look very well. This is easily remedied by small additions that may not influence the taste but will do wonders for the looks. The easiest colour tricks are:

• some mild carrots for the orange-ish hue,
• a little bit of turmeric for a golden hue,
• onion peel for a very nice gold-brown effect (use the nicer, tender peels, not the dry and dirty outer layers)
• a piece of beetroot for a pinkish hue, good for greenish, ghastly soups.

5. Pretty serving bowls

If you have trouble convincing yourself that soups can be fun, just think how many odd and fun things you can use to serve them in. Cocktail glass? Teacup? How about you use the ladle to drink straight from the pot, Panoramix-style? Now try that with a steak. Go on. I'll wait.

Leek and Potato Soup with a Secret Ingredient

I've decided to be a good witch and share one of my secrets with You. I've held onto it long enough, and now it's time for it to be set free, so that others may enjoy this better, improved, damnably delicious and enchantingly easy recipe for the good old leek and potato.

It's one of the classics, the soup that everyone knows about. But how many times have you actually made it? The humble leek and potato is often passed over in favour of other, more exotic recipes, which is too bad, considering how delicious it can be. You only need to add The Secret Ingredient.

Ingredients (for three portions)

• Leek - one small stalk (~0.2 kg)
• Potatoes - three to four medium-sized ones
• Water - about 1 liter of it
• Cooking oil (you can use butter to make it "more British")
• Sea salt
• Pepper
• Fresh dill
• Laurel leaf (optional)
• The Secret Ingredient! - a handful of unsalted peanuts, or a spoonful of peanut butter.

Tools

• Blender

Preparation

Put some oil into a pot. Peel and dice the potatoes. Chop up the leek and stir-fry in the pot for a few minutes on low heat, adding a bit of salt and as much pepper as you like, which should not be too much - this is not meant to be a spicy soup. Chop up the peanuts a bit, if you're using them - take a sharp, heavy knife and use it to carefully crush the peanuts, don't go at them like you do with onion or they'll ricochet all around the kitchen - and add them to the leeks. Stir fry a few minutes more. (If you prefer peanut butter, just add it to the leeks and stir, don't fry overmuch.) Add the potatoes and water, mix it all up, toss in the laurel leaf and some strands of dill. Leave it to boil, still on low heat (low heat is important for this recipe, both the leeks and the peanut butter can burn easily), for at least an hour. Add more salt or pepper if it needs them, but be careful not to smother the peanut taste.
Use the blender to give it a smooth, creamy texture. You can sprinkle some fresh dill on top, too.

That's it!

Cauliflower Cream

You asked for it, you got it. Cream soup of cauliflower, easy, light, and good. 

Due to the delicate taste of this particular vegetable, this soup may not be suitable for people who have a "mcdonaldised" sense of taste, meaning those who need a pound of salt in everything and two pounds of cheese on top. Although this recipe can be made exactly that way, only then it doesn't taste of cauliflower at all, which makes the whole exercise a bit pointless.

Ingredients

• Large cauliflower
• Large onion
• Medium carrot
• 1.5l of water
• a spoonful of oil
• a spoonful of butter
• laurel leaves
• parsley leaves
• sea salt
• black pepper
• a pinch of curry powder

Tools

• Blender
• Knife

Preparation

Upturning the cauliflower makes it easy to cut off individual "roses."

Dice the onion and carrot. Wash the cauliflower thoroughly and remove the leaves. You can also remove the hardest, ugliest part of the stalk. Cut off a handful of those pretty cauliflower roses (or two handfuls if you have small hands) and set them aside. Chop up the rest of the cauliflower any old how.

Heat up the oil in a pot and stir-fry the onions, carrot and as much of the cauliflower as you can fit that will still fry (and not just sit on top of the rest). Add the butter and a tiny pinch of curry powder to the frying and watch out so you won't burn anything. 5-7 minutes of this is enough. When the onion is pleasantly yellow, pour the water in and add the rest of the ingredients, apart from the pretty roses and parsley. Cover the pot up and boil for as long as you like.

When the vegetables are nicely soft (preferably falling apart by themselves), take the laurel leaves out and use the blender to make a smooth mixture, then add the roses you set aside, the parsley leaves and the laurel leaves again. This is done to make the soup look prettier, so you don't absolutely have to do it - it also prolongs preparation time a bit because now you have to boil the roses again. But it's worth it.

You can serve it with cream, or croutons, or cheese, or all three, but there's honestly no need.

Carrot Soup

That's life's blessin', darling. It always goes on.- I wish I could remember where I read that.

No matter what happens, life goes on, which can even be jarring sometimes. Whether You got your heart broken one too many times, lost your job or can't even find one to begin with, there always comes the moment when You have to look facts in the face: life goes on. And this means we have to eat.

So, regardless of all the chaos that's made its nest in my life and ignoring all the little worry worms that pester me constantly, I'll be continuing to cook and to tell You about it. Hey, You read blogs at your peril. But since I'm still adjusting to the situation, I'll start with something simple. I believe this is actually the first soup recipe to appear here on KW.

Ingredients

• Carrots - two per person minimum
• Onions - half an onion per person
• Celery root - depends on its size, but half a root should do
• Water
• Olive oil - two spoons maximum
• Seasoning: pepper, basil and (if You're into it) salt

Tools

• Blender, or
• Sieve and pestle

Preparation

In a pot of a sufficient size (depends on how much soup You want to make), heat up the olive oil. Dice the onions and put them into the pot. While the onions cook, dice the carrots and the celery root (yes, yes, You need to wash and peel them first. Thank you, Captain Obvious ) and add them to the pot. Fry all the vegetables for a moment, but be careful not to let the onions brown. When onion browns, its taste changes and we don't want that here.
So keep on stirring the vegetables on the oil for a while - preferably until they get a pale-gold sheen, or the onions are on the verge of browning - and when You feel they're ready, pour the water in.
Now all You need to do is keep the pot on the stove, boiling, but not too violently. The vegetables need to be soft enough to mix smoothly, so the best way to go about this is to keep the pot over a small fire, cover it and go read something for about an hour.

If  You're not using a blender, boil the vegetables longer - the softer they are, the easier You can run them through a sieve (basically You just fish the big bits out with the sieve, and then rub them around it with the pestle until they mash). If You have a blender, You can shorten the boiling phase.
Mix the soup in whatever way You deem appropriate, then, and season it to suit your taste. It works best with fresh, aromatic herbs such as basil, mint or rosemary, with some pepper to spice things up.

This is quite a nutritious soup, but it does not rest heavily on the stomach. It can be used as the first course if You're planning some heavier dishes later. For health reasons,  it's definitely worth recommending to frequent computer users, just like every other carrot-based meal.