Hearty Fall Soups
Posted on November 8, 2007. Filed Under Articles
Farad Jon Be A Magyar Konyhaba! New England has the best change of colors and fall season than any other place in the world! While I do enjoy the fall weather I mostly partake of the golf to be played this time of the year.
A good fall season gives everyone a last chance to enjoy what they couldn’t get enough of during the summer months and in my case its playing golf. Moving forward we have Thanksgiving to enjoy and all upcoming William Penn Branch Christmas parties. Speaking as a chef, this is the best time of the year to get into the kitchen and make as much food as you can. Not only is the atmosphere in the kitchen warm and cozy BUT the cooler weather outside makes your body burn more calories to stay warm. On that note of burning calories to stay warm and because all my housekeeping is done for this month, let’s get into some soup making. Here is the trivia question…What do Herberton Williams and Cornell football have in common? This is another answer that amazed me because of its simplicity, impact and longevity. And now into the kitchen…
A liquid food, SOUP is made by combining ingredients like meat, vegetables, legumes and noodles in a stock or hot water until a certain specific flavor is obtained. They can also be hot or cold. Soup is classified in two main categories CLEAR and THICK. If you want to go further the French classify clear soups as Bouillon and Consommé but that’s for another day in the kitchen. Thick soups are further classified as PUREES or BISQUES. Lets go into the background a bit more. STOCK is a strained liquid that comes from cooking meat or vegetables in water. It needs to be seasoned, most times is opaque not clear but has flavor and makes a good base for other culinary delights one of which is soup. A good stock makes for a good soup base. BROTH is the liquid that is taken directly from a stockpot without straining out any ingredients. In essence broth and stock come from the same source with the big difference that stock has more flavor than broth because it has cooked longer in the pot. Chicken broth we all enjoy when we have a cold and its also used in many culinary preparations. You can enjoy a broth by itself or with chunks of meat and veggies dropped into your broth.
Chicken Noodle soup is chicken broth with pieces of chicken and noodles. Scotch Broth has mutton, barley and veggies. Another variety of soup is CHOWDER which contains some pork salted fatback and thickened with flour and contains milk. Over the years people take Chowder to mean clam chowder if you live near any ocean. The components have changed a bit as well. Milk can be replaced with cream, the salt pork left out and it doesn’t have to contain just seafood. The most popular chowders are Corn Chowder, Clam Chowder or Seafood Chowder. If a chowder has a New England tag in its name that means usually a white base not to be confused with Manhattan chowder that has a tomato base. The word Chowder comes from chaudiere the description of the pot its cooked in. We’ll get more into chowder making in another column as that is a great category of food.
A soup can be thin liquid based or thick like a chowder. And anything in between. Once you know what makes a soup thick or thin you can make adjustments to get the best consistency your family will enjoy. When we mention hearty soups it usually mean more contents in the soup. A hearty vegetable soup would contain more filling than broth. It would almost be a stew but because the base broth is thin its not. I will mention that soups and stews are very close in nature but do have separate characteristics making them each a unique culinary delight. You can combine different broths to get a different flavor to your soup. FRENCH ONION soup combines onion, beef and sometimes chicken broths to get its unique taste. This particular soup was created by King Louis XV of France when he combined butter, onions and champagne for a meal. This soup today also contains cheese and croutons and I’m sure we have all enjoyed it in our favorite restaurant. Now that we have a little more background let me give you some tips on how to make hearty soups you can enjoy this fall season. The recipes at the end are the ones I enjoy the most and have made countless times at school and for my friends and family. Use these recipes as a base to make your own creations as well. Your only limited by your imagination and certain culinary rules that apply when making the perfect soup.
FLAVOR is the name of the game and comes from wherever you can get it. If your ingredients are not the best your soup won’t be either. Use cream, butter, soup base to give extra flavor to soup. FRESH ingredients are always better than frozen or canned. Sometimes we are limited in choices to fresh produce but make those substitutions to give yourself the culinary edge. Remember if you can’t get fresh, get frozen. Your last option should be using any canned products with the exception of tomatoes. Tomato products from a can are better to use during the months when you can’t get garden fresh product as most of them are very consistent in flavor. FROZEN ingredients like mixed vegetables add bulk to soup and minimal flavor. Frozen seafood also needs a boost in any chowder or bisque. To punch up the taste use a good SOUP BASE. I tend not to use the bouillon cubes as they add too much salt. I like soup bases that are in a paste form and my favorite is “Better Than Bouillon”. Save your LEFTOVERS in the freezer and use them as filling in your soups. Meatloaf makes a good substitution for soup beef when making beef barley soup. A few baked potatoes not eaten at dinner will thicken up your next chowder or cream of potato soup. HERBS & SPICES will give extra flavor to your soups and again try to use fresh rather than dried. Most soup recipes will tell you what is best and by your own experience you’ll know what works for you. SIMMER don’t boil your soups. A good soup needs time to cook and meld all the flavors together. Boiling is a violent reaction of liquid and ingredients in a pot usually destroying the solid contents and making the broth cloudy which requires extensive repair. Last but not least the most important part of making a good soup is TASTE, TASTE, TASTE! You should be tasting ingredients before you add them to your soup, tasting the soup at various stages of cooking and tasting the final product before you serve it.
There is nothing worse than following a recipe only to find out at the end you needed more of a certain item to make it taste better. I tip my hat to you all now go into the kitchen and make soup to your hearts content. TRIVIA ANSWER: Campbell’s Soup. In 1898 Herberton Williams was an executive for Campbell’s Soup Company and attended the football game between Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania. Being very impressed by the Cornell team colors of brilliant red and white because they made a striking image he convinced his Board of Directors to change the label on their soup cans so they would stand out in any market or grocery store. Today the same brilliant red and white colors still adorn Campbell’s Condensed soups as they haven‘t changed in over 100 years.
Have a great month. Jo etvagyat, Chef Bela.
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I am so happy to see you all have a websitenow I am a Hungarian and I wish I could of cooked like my mother did Keep up the good work I am getting alot of good points from you all Thanks again my hungarian maiden name is Bene
What is the actual name of “chitney sulinah” (sorry for the spelling!). We are going to The Meat Market next week and don’t want to feel silly asking…. Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance…Lisa