Soups
Soups
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Kale and White Bean Soup
This is one of those dishes that I threw together on a Wednesday night because I had a lot of kale to use up and I was in the mood for soup, but then it was so delicious that I had to make it again immediately so I could measure the ingredients properly and photograph it for the blog. (You’d think I’d have learned by now to measure and photograph every time I create something new, but I never do!) You can make every element of this from scratch if you have the time, or you can cheat and use what’s in your pantry for a quick meal. In this case, I used…
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Homemade Chicken Stock
One of the kitchen tasks that I find most satisfying is making homemade stock from leftover meat bones. You’re literally taking what would otherwise be garbage and turning it into a nutritious, tasty, valuable commodity. At my local grocery store, their brand of non-organic stock costs $2.49/quart and is chock full of sodium, to say nothing of weird ingredients like “yeast extract.” What is that, even? As of this writing, organic chicken stock from a popular national brand costs a whopping $8/quart. By comparison, I purchased a whole USDA organic chicken for $12 and got two meals out of it before tipping its leftover bones into my stock pot. I’ll get a little…
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Vermont Cheddar-Corn Chowder
The original restaurant recipe from which I adapted this one calls for a heart-stopping one pound of bacon, two cups of heavy cream, and sixteen ounces of cheddar cheese. While there’s no disputing that it tastes delicious, if I cooked like that at home our next trip up to town would be on a stretcher. I wanted to see if I could create a thick, flavorful chowder with a slightly lower fat and sodium content without compromising on taste. To accomplish this, I leveraged a technique that I first learned to love while developing my French Carrot-Ginger Soup recipe, which contains no cream and is thickened with Arborio rice, a grain that becomes…
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Fresh Pea Soup
This recipe is a great way to make use of spring’s short-lived abundance of peas. To keep the sodium in check while maintaining maximum richness of flavor, I use a 50/50 mix of vegetable and chicken stock, but you can easily make the dish this vegetarian by using all vegetable stock. This soup can be frozen for later use, but because there is milk it may separate a bit when thawed. If you choose to freeze it, add a splash of cream when re-heating and use your immersion blender to mix it all back together. Do not garnish before freezing.
