Principles of Soup

Soup is one of those things I will never get bored of, can eat every day, and love to cook perhaps more than anything else.  It's cheap to make, you can feed yourself and your family for days off a pot, and it will warm your toes when it's nasty outside.  As much as I love soup, though, I'm often disappointed by soup when I order it elsewhere (with the exception of Pho--it's perfection in a bowl), not because the ingredients are bad, typically, but the execution leaves something to be desired.  In my effort to make the world a better place one pot at a time, here are the principles that I follow for a little bowl of joy.

1.  Don't put a mouse in your soup--it won't taste good...I'm kidding....but DO read Mouse Soup.  Arnold Lobel is my hero.

1 (for real). Soup does not need to be cooked forever:  Soup is so delicious because the liquid eeks out all of the flavor from whatever it is that you put in the soup.  That being said, soup ingredients only have so much to give before in the words of Crescent Dragonwagon, "...all that is left is tasteless fiber, to be strained out and discarded."**  So can you cook your soup on a back burner for hours upon hours--sure, but be warned that the chicken won't taste like chicken and your veg will be a big pile of unappealing mush.  You know the kind--it just looks sad and anemic and lifeless. Soup should be exciting!

2.  Layer your ingredients as you cook:  Soup is a conglomeration of a lot of different ingredients, so you would think, well, if I throw it all in at the same time, it will all magically happen.  Not so, dear reader.  Everything cooks at a different rate.  If you stagger the addition of your ingredients in relation to how long they cook, the end result will be much better than if you throw everything in the pot at the beginning.  The more you cook, the more you will come to understand the optimum cooking times of various things and how they will relate to each other (like how overcooked broccoli will stink up your house for days or how an undercooked carrot will make you feel like a rabbit, and not in a good way).

3.  Get thee some knife skills:  First, get yourself a good knife--you need maybe two--a good paring knife, and a chef's knife.  Keep them sharper than you think prudent and maintain them that way.  I use Wusthof because they fit my hand well.  Shun makes fantastically light knives that are a joy to work with.  It'll set you back $80-100 to get a decent chef's knife, but it is a true investement.  Back to soup: soup is a texture goldmine, and learning to chop vegetables of the same size and similar shape is worth the practice.  Your soup...all your cooking will taste better and you'll find yourself enjoying cooking a lot more.

4.  Water hot, water cold:  Cold water will leach out more flavor from ingredients than hot water.  Cold water is therefore good to use on a soup whose flavor is largely dependent on the stock--like chicken soup or pho.  On the other hand, adding hot liquid (and by hot, I mean, you've heated it up, not just taken hot water from the tap) to ingredients or ingredients to hot liquid will allow the ingredients to keep a lot more of their individual texture and flavor because they simply cook faster than if started in cold water.  Using hot liquid is good for soups that rely on texture like chili or minestrone.

5.  Simmer yes, boil, no:  Boiling a soup makes the stock get cloudy.  While it's important to bring things to a boil to kill any nasties in the stock itself, it needs to be turned down ASAP so it doesn't get all cloudy on you.  Boiling also makes things tough, I think.

6.  Let your spoon be your recipe:  Soup relies on ratios much more than any specific recipe.  Michael Ruhlman recently wrote a book on ratios and cooking.  I'm not a Michael Ruhlman fan, what with his snobby I'm-better-than-you tone, but the art of ratios in cooking is interesting.  What I mean is instead of saying--use 1 T of onion, 1/2 cup diced carrot, etc.  look at your ingredients and imagine what it will be like when you pull your spoon out of your bowl.  It's my personal opinion that you should get a little bit of everything...if it all looks in balance to you on your imaginary spoon, it probably will be when you get to the end.  If your soup looks like it needs more liquid as you're cooking, you're probably right.  Trust your instincts--you have more than you might give yourself credit for.

7.  Flavor principles:  I like my soup as a balance between hot-salty-sour-and-sweet. 
hot:  Chiles, chile paste, chile powder (as in chili or in pure forms like ancho or cayenne), chile flakes, or chile sauce or tabasco etc can all add a nice zing.  You know your personal heat tolerance, so follow it.  Be aware that heat will be absorbed by the other ingredients, so if the soup tastes hot initially, it will not be as spicy after sitting for a few hours.             
salty: Salt can turn everything around--learn to use it well...it can be your biggest ally or your biggest enemy.  How much and what kind is personal--you just have to taste it. As fanatical as I am about making your own stock, I like to have some good quality bouillon like this one on hand to add towards the end of cooking if the soup tastes like it needs more body and a different kind of salt. 
sour: A little acid (in the form of citrus, wine, vinegar or tomatoes) at the end of cooking can add a depth to your soup. 
sweet:  A little sugar (or honey, agave nectar, maple syrup, or molasses)can soften the raw edges of a soup with a lot of acid like a tomato soup.

8.  Don't forget the garnish:  Parsley isn't just for prettying up a plate--it and other herbs can add a brightness and some good fresh flavor to a bowl of soup that you can't get from simmering it as it's cooking (you should do that too though for a different kind of flavor).  The same holds true for a drizzle of oil, vinegar, chile sauce, yogurt or anything else you can think of putting on top of soup.    

More later...I'm eating some red lentil soup.