This post is for those of you in the Northeast who haven’t felt their toes since last week. And for those of you who keep tweeting and emailing requests for soups right now please, Jenny! And for my mom who called me last night and said Why haven’t you done some kind of soup yet? For those of you in warmer climes, sorry, this post is not for you. In fact, I’m going to do my best to suppress my envy of you and your warmer climes by just ignoring you completely.
Best Get-it-On-the-Table Fast Soup Greek Chicken Soup (Avgolemono), above. A Greek twist on chicken noodle. Just don’t do what I did last night, which was try to temper and whisk the egg into the broth during the 30 seconds my egg-hating sous chef Abby was retrieving bowls for serving. I panicked, didn’t get the egg mixture hot enough, whisked it into the main soup just as she was coming my way, only to find the pot of broth more Egg Drop Soup-ish than creamy, luscious Avgolemono. This wasn’t a disaster (I love Egg Drop soup) except Abby kept picking up little strings of white and yellow with her spoon and saying “This looks an awful lot like an egg.” (Me: “You were with me the whole time. How could there be an egg in there??”) If you have everything you need, you can be eating this in under 20 minutes.
Best Soup for Picky Eaters Tortilla Soup. If you are all set up for Super Bowl Nachos, then you are all set up for this soup. For me, it’s all about the lime, but for the kids, it might be all about the cheese. So think about the diners at the table as you assemble and customize accordingly.
Healthiest and Heartiest Butternut Squash Soup. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with this one, replacing the curry powder with smoked paprika (just a little; stuff’s strong) and topping with pepitas and Greek yogurt instead of walnuts and creme fraiche. No matter what you do, though, it’s a classic. It was also the recipe that convinced Andy that butternut squash was maybe worth a shot.
Scrappiest Soup Grated Vegetable. This is a riff on the soup made famous by Jacques Pepin that’s always good to have in your back-pocket. You basically bring a pot of chicken stock to a boil, then shred whatever vegetables you have directly into the pot. The only rules are to keep your carrots-onions-celery to an even ratio and, if you are using greens, to tear instead of shred. Simmer for about 15 minutes and stir in a few tablespoons of grits to thicken if desired. Serve with grated Parm or Gruyere and olive oil drizzled on top. And crusty bread.
Soup Most Likely You Could Convince the Baby Was His Regular Old Vegetable Puree Ariel & Yolanda’s Broccoli Soup. This looks so good, and calls for ingredients I always have in the pantry — I think I’ll try it out for lunch today since (shocker) girls are home from school due to inclement weather.
Others from around the web: Chorizo and White Bean, Tomato Bread Soup, Jamie Oliver’s Leek & Potato, Ina Garten’s Italian Wedding — amazing I haven’t made a version of this for the girls yet.
Stay warm.
Photo credit: Marcus Nilsson
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Love, love me some soup. Had some twice this week already. Actually wished we had longer-lasting cold snaps here in SoCal so we could enjoy more soups.
I am a newsletter subscriber. Do I win the Lodge cast iron skillet?
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It sure is soup weather, great ideas!
I am a newsletter subscriber. Do I win the Lodge cast iron skillet?
can’t wait to try some new soups…
Dinners have been in heavy rotation at our house recently. We’ve just polished off Smitten Kitten’s carrot and sesame soup http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2012/01/carrot-soup-with-miso-and-sesame/ and are working on the baked potato soup left-overs. The picky toddler had a spoon of baked potato and proceeded to eat only the bacon and cheese, but she had more of the carrot soup – but then again, she likes carrot “fries” so not totally unexpected. Thanks for all the good ideas – grated veggie soup this weekend?
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Thinking some soup should be in my crock pot right about now.
I can’t wait to make Avgolemono again, so good!! There were no leftovers that night.
Ina Garten’s Italian Wedding Soup is really good. The one change I’ve made is rather than adding the greens (spinach, arugula, kale, chard – whatever I have on hand) to the pot of soup, I cut the greens into ribbons and place them in the bottom of the soup bowls and then ladle the soup over the greens. The heat of the soup cooks the greens to perfection and you don’t have to worry about overcooked, tired greens when reheating leftovers.
We live in one of the warmest of warm climates and we still eat soup!!
I know this is an old post, but I still have to comment. My fam has been loving Avgolemono since I found your original post w/ its recipe. Well, everyone in the family except the child who insists on deconstructed dinners and won’t touch soup or anything that may have ever considered being soup. I was lazy last night, and just scooped some of the orzo and chicken out of the soup w/ a slotted spoon instead of really deconstructing it like I usually do for her. Guess who gobbled up the whole thing and was begging for leftovers tonight! By the way … is it wrong to lie to your child and tell her no we didn’t give her soup, it just as a little bit of “special sauce” on it???? 😉 Thanks for the great recipe!