Soups & Stews: Flavor in a Bowl
Recipe: Cioppino for Two
Cioppino, a savory tomato-based fish soup, is a specialty of traditional San Francisco seafood restaurants. This recipe starts with a complex vegetable base that goes from simple to special depending on the types and variety of fish and shellfish you want to add.
Recipe: Creamy Asparagus Soup
Fresh asparagus stars in this silky, creamy soup; a bonus is how quick and easy it is to make.
Recipe: Roasted Red Pepper Soup
The combination of roasted red peppers and slow-cooked onions gives this soup a deep, intriguing flavor. It's perfect as a small appetizer or delicious first course for two.
Recipe: Chicken Soup with Ginger-Scallion Sauce
Ginger-scallion sauce gives a spicy Asian twist to this hearty chicken noodle soup recipe.
Recipe: French Onion Soup for Two
A combination of slow-cooked onions and crisp browned onions gives this soup a nicely complex texture. Chicken and beef stock provide deep flavor.
Recipe: Smoked Salmon Chowder for Two
This hearty chowder for two uses both fresh and smoked salmon for subtle but delicious flavor and rich texture.
Greek Chicken Soup: Kotosoupa Avgolemono
I've been making this Greek chicken soup for years - ever since I first discovered it. It's good any time of year, but I think it's lemony flavor is particularly suited to Spring nights.
Potato-Cheddar Soup
Hearty, savory, unctuous, this Potato-Cheddar Soup is outstanding on a cold blustery day. In fact that's when I developed this recipe. Serves 2.
Gumbo: Caribbean Savor
Gumbo is distinguished by the roux - a combination of oil or fat and flour. But while in traditional French cooking roux is a thickening agent, in Creole and Cajun cuisine it is a flavoring agent.
Winter Squash Soup
I've had more bowls of bland, watery, insipid winter squash soup than I want to count -whether made with butternut, buttercup, or kabocha squash. So several years ago I set out to create a rich, complex, and satisfying squash soup and eventually came up with this recipe. Serves 2.
Mushroom Soup: Mycophilia
I suppose you could call this Cream of Mushroom Soup, after all it includes both cream and mushrooms. But the order is wrong it is more a Mushroom Soup with cream. Super savory but light, musky and fresh, simple and sexy. Serves 2.
Bean Soup with Country Ham
This bean soup with country ham involves a trick I've never seen anyone else use. It seems so obvious and makes the beans so exceptional, and yet... Makes 4 servings.
Cheddar Soup: Makes the Cold Weather Worthwhile
Cheddar Soup? How can you go wrong? Extra sharp cheddar layers its distinctive bite over the unctuous richness of milk and cream. Serves 2.
Fresh Tomato Soup: Soup with a Kick!
This soup is best made with fresh tomatoes in season, but it’s also pretty good made with canned tomatoes in the dead of winter. Serves 2.
Beef Burgundy: French, Festive, Fantastic
Beef Burgundy is another of those wonderfully hearty, slow-cooked meals suitable for a Dutch oven or slow cooker. And like most such dishes, it's even better on the second day, so this recipe plans for leftovers. Serves 2 with leftovers.
Pasta e Fagiole: Old-world Flavor
This traditional Italian soup, Pasta e Fagiole, recipe combines pasta and beans to produce a richly flavored and very inexpensive meal. Serves 2.
French Beef Stew (Boeuf en Daube)
This French beef stew recipe is unusual because the meat is marinated in a vegetable mixture of onions, carrots, and celery, which brings an unusual lightness to the flavors. Serves 2.
Lentil Soup: A Solution to Leftover Turkey
This lentil soup is a great way to not only make use of leftover turkey bones, but some of the leftover turkey as well. Although the recipe makes a lot, it freezes beautifully. Serves 6.
Country Ham and Bean Soup: Flavor-Packed Goodness
What makes this soup so good is the beans soaking up the homemade stock as they cook - of course the country ham helps. Serves 3.
Chili Today
This chili recipe uses diced meat instead of ground beef, which gives it more character. It also includes homemade chile powder. Serves 2 with leftovers.
Tip: Perfect Soups, Stews and Braises
Fall and winter are the seasons for soups, stews, and braises. These are all cooking methods that involve cooking in liquid but most cooks make a serious mistake when making these dishes: they boil the meat, don't.
Potato Soup: A Spoon Full of Comfort
This recipe for potato soup (or chowder) is simple and earthy and it manages to be filling without being heavy. A medium starch potato such Yukon Golds contribute to the thickness of the broth without the need to use flour. Serves 4.
Cold Summer Soups
Cold summer soups are particularly welcome at cookouts, barbeques, and even picnics where you're outside in the summer heat. I thought a collection of recipes for cold soups might be a nice addition to the holiday. So I've posted a few of my own recipes and included some of the favorites of other About.com guides.
Gazpacho: Light, Lucious, Lusty
My recipe for gazpacho is somewhat untraditional, but it's rich, lucious, and packed with the bright flavors of summer - everything one could ask for in a gazpacho recipe. Serves 4.
Vichyssoise: Cool and Refreshing
Vichyssoise is a cold leek and potato soup. This recipe for Vichyssoise has been adapted to serve 2.
Senate Bean Soup
Senate Bean Soup is served daily in the US Senate cafeteria. This version adds a bit of country ham to the mixture making it even more savory.
Cold Asparagus Soup: A Spring Delight
When I snap off the woody ends of asparagus for one dish or another I collect the ends in a plastic bag and freeze them. At the end of the season I make this asparagus soup recipe using the woody ends to make stock. Serves 4.
Cold Cucumber Soup: Tart, Tangy, Tingly
This is a wonderfully cool and refreshing recipe for cucumber soup with a nice touch of exotica from the curry. Serve as a first course at dinner – particularly with fish – or with a sandwich for lunch. Serves 2.
Cold Borscht: Chilling Out
When I was a kid my mother used to make cold borscht two or three times a summer. I didn't have a recipe, but I looked at several and came up with this. It's wonderfully refreshing on a hot summer day. [1]Serves 2.
5 Favorite Stews
Cooking terms are often a matter of convention and region. Here in the South we call it "stuffing" even when it's made in a casserole while in other areas they call it "dressing" even when stuffed in a bird. Soups, stews, and braises also suffer from this confusion. My definition is a soup has bite-sized pieces of the ingredients and is at least...
Clam Chowder for Two: New England's Finest
This clam chowder for two is extremely simple in it's flavors as great New England chowders all and is unusual because it's thickened with oyster crackers instead of a roux.
Cajun Shrimp Soup: A Feisty Bowl
I first had shrimp soup in New Orleans in a little hole-in-the-wall a friend took me to. This isn't the recipe I had then, but it's very similar with a nice spicy bite to it.
Chicken Noodle Soup: Ultimate Comfort
Even the remembered comfort of Campbells Chicken Noodle Soup, a childhood favorite, can't compare with homemade chicken noodle soup. You can make it in thirty minutes, but it's better if you give it an hour and goose the canned broth.
Honeydew Soup: Keeping Cool
This honeydew soup is a great starter for a patio dinner or, paired with a panini, makes a wonderful lunch. The addition of Midori (a Japanese honeydew liqueur) makes it more intense, the floral notes of lavender complement the honeydew, and the bacon adds a surprising savoriness. If the melon is exceptionally sweet you may want to use less sugar.
Beef and Vegetable Soup
Beef and vegetable soup: take some bones, stew meat and vegetables and toss them in a pot with a few other things and within a couple of hours you have a perfect meal for a cold rainy night.
Manhattan: The Red Chowder
More a vegetable soup with clams than a genuine chowder, this tomato-based bowl is still wonderfully good for lunch or supper and you can whip up a batch in less than 45 minutes - leaving time to make some biscuits too.
Zuppa! Soup's On!
Soup! Is there anything more satisfying on a chilly fall or winter night than a bowl of hearty soup with a slab of buttered fresh bread on the side. And even better, while soup isn't quick, it is usually easy, requiring little from the cook once it's on the stove. Soup is also typically cheap, making for an economical as well as a delicious...
Chilled Soups Image Gallery
Chilled summer soups are particularly welcome at cookouts, barbeques, and even picnics where you're outside in the summer heat.
Soup Image Gallery
Soup! Is there anything more satisfying on a chilly fall or winter night than a bowl of hearty soup with a slab of buttered fresh bread on the side. And even better, while soup isn't quick, it is usually easy, requiring little from the cook once it's on the stove. Soup is also typically cheap, making for an economical as well as a delicious...