You don’t need a soup recipe, so stop looking for one. You can have endless soup ideas when you concentrate on the basic methods and the two categories of soups. Then, your individual tastes and desires take the place of someone else’s written instructions.
Perhaps in no other area of the kitchen can a chef express their creativity than through the making of soups. Soups are a blank canvas. Once you understand the importance of flavorful liquids and thickening agents, any sauce can be made into a wholesome winter meal.
The skillful making of soups is the true artistic culinary expression in the kitchen. When I used to interview and hire chefs for my catering company, I’d never ask them to demonstrate their “signature” dish. They’ve prepared their favorite entrée many times over. When deciding whom to hire, I’d ask the prospect to make me a soup. To me, this shows their ability to combine basic methods with spontaneous inspiration in an artistic fashion.
You can turn virtually ANY type of food into a soup. Any protein, any vegetable, any ingredient that you’ve prepared or have as leftovers can be turned into a spoonful of fantastic flavor. However, it’s important to begin with the most flavorful stock or milk as the base of the creation.
Soups are classified by cooking technique and appearance. The two types are clear soups and thick soups. This should be immediately obvious. You can look down into the bowl and tell if the item is clear and made from stock or broth, or thick.
Thick soups are categorized as either “cream” or “pureed”. This has to do with the thickening agent employed during the process. If you use a roux along with milk or stock, it’s a cream soup. If you simmer vegetables in liquid and then puree them, it’s a pureed soup. Clear soups are always made with a stock or broth, that’s why the most flavorful liquids must be used for something like Chicken Noodle.
The thickening agent for a cream soup generally comes from one of the Mother Sauces we’ve discussed previously. The combination of béchamel sauce with poached shrimp instantly becomes a cream of shrimp soup. The same is true for a vegetable stock thickened with roux that has mushrooms added. Viola! Cream of Mushroom soup. It’s that easy.
A pureed soup needs no thickener because the act of pureeing a starchy vegetable naturally thickens the item. Since nothing has less flavor than water, you wouldn’t start with a bland ingredient as a base for your creation. However, imagine poaching broccoli in water. You’ll wind up with softened broccoli and a broccoli flavored broth. Now you’ve got something as the foundation of a puree of broccoli soup.
The rest is up to you. What kind of soup do you want to create? If it’s a cream soup, decide on the ingredients, poach them in milk or stock and thicken with roux. If it’s a puree soup, poach the item in liquid and thicken it with a blender or food processor. For a clear soup, start with a flavorful stock then add chicken and rice or noodles. It’s too easy for me to keep writing about it.
It’s time for you to hit the kitchen and arrive at the endless soup ideas that come from the ingredients you desire, the methods described above, and your personal artistic interpretation.
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Hi I purchased the sauce and soup classes but can’t remember the website. Please help!
Joni
Hi Joni,
Welcome to WebCookingClasses! I’m glad you decided to join our large community of home cooks who want to be confident and creative in the kitchen. This is accomplished by having dependable and repeatable METHODS of cooking that work for ANY ingredient, ANY diet, and ANY desire.
You can find everything you need on our Customer Support Page
Hi Chef Todd,
I enjoyed this video on Clear and Cream Soups very much. I see your point on the knife skills with the clear soups. It is something that I have noticed more going into a resturant and you see Chicken Soup on the menu. Oh ok I’ll have that and you see that everything looks like it was scraps from something else that was thrown into a pot. No knife skills at all.
I would like to know if you have a place on the web site or know of someplace that I may get the correct spelling for many of the Culinary Terms. I am having difficulty finding one on line that it good. As you do these videos, wonderful as they are, I am positive I am spelling the terms incorrectly in my notes and would like to correct that.
Thank you for coming up with this program. I love that you take it back to the basics.
No matter how long or what level of cooking someone is at, this is a great way to go back and look at the things that overtime some chefs have gotten sloppy with and its great for home cooks to learn right from the start.
Thank you,
Jo
Hi Jo!
You’re right about bringing people back to cooking basics. I’ve taught more than 400 culinary students that have gone on to professional careers. They always arrive to the first semester of class with specific ideas about how to cook something they’ve gotten from Food TV or from their Grandmothers. Yet, when I ask them why they cook a particular item in a certain fashion, they never seem to know. They just follow the steps someone taught them and never stopped to ask “why”. My mission is to supply all the answers to the WHY questions floating around out there. Once you know the reason behind doing something, then your creativity can kick in and you apply it to something else. Then, your culinary repertoire expands exponentially.
If you google “culinary terms dictionary”, you’ll find plenty of websites to help you with the vocabulary of cooking. The single best source I’ve ever found is the classic book “Le Repertoire de Cuisine” by Auguste Escoffier. It’s not a cookbook, but a reference book of classical French cooking. I recommend it to all my students. Here’s where you can find it: http://www.amazon.com/Repertoire-Cuisine-Renowned-Classic-Experts/dp/0812051084/ref=sr_1_1/180-2643129-1793616?ie=UTF8&qid=1426511667&sr=8-1&keywords=le+r%C3%A9pertoire+de+la+cuisine
Thank you for your kind comment and commitment to improving your lifestyle through better food and cooking.