Learning Soups

Soups in general are liquid foods made from meat, poultry, fish, or vegetables. There are three different categories of soups, clear, thick soups, and special soups. Most of these soups are based on the stock used.

TEMPERATURE

  • Serve hot soups hot in hot cups or bowls.
  • Serve cold soups cold in chilled bowls.

GARNISH

  • Garnishes in soup. You can use the vegetables in clear vegetable soup as garnishes. Also meats, poultry, seafood, pasta products, and grains can be used as garnishes in some soups. Consommés are usually named after their garnish, like a consommé brunoise contains vegetables cut into brunoise shape, vegetable cream soups are usually garnished with cut pieces of the vegetable from which they are made.
  • Toppings should be placed on the soup right before you serve them. I do not recommend using toppings on clear soups, but there is no harm in doing so. Toppings for a thick soup include fresh herbs like parsley, sage, chervil, celery leaves, leeks chopped or julienned, fine julienne of vegetables, sliced almonds toasted, grated cheese, egg yolks, egg whites, croutons, crumbled bacon, paprika, flavored butters, flavored oils, sour cream, crème fraiche, or whipped cream.
  • Accompaniments include toast, corn chips, bread sticks, cheese straws, profiteroles(tiny unsweetened cream-puff shells), whole-grain wafers.

CLEAR SOUPS

Clear soups are a clear, unthickened broth or stock. A broth is considered a simple clear soup without solid ingredients. Vegetable soup is a clear, seasoned stock or broth with the addition of one or more vegetables and sometimes meat or poultry products and starches. A consommé is a rich, flavorful stock or broth that has been clarified to make it perfectly clear and transparent. A well made consommé is one of the greatest soups of all.

Broth

Simmering meat and vegetables make a broth, while simmering bones and vegetables makes a stock. A broth is an excellent choice as the base of a soup when you want a distinctive meat flavor. Broths can be served as is with only seasoning and maybe a garnish, but broths can be used to make wonderful vegetable soups and other clear soups. Broth can be made with water, but to make rich flavorful broths use a stock instead of water.

Consommé

The word consommé literally means completed or concentrated, so a consommé is a strong, concentrated stock or broth. The number one rule for making a consommé is that the stock or broth must be strong, rich, and flavorful, clarity is second to the importance of strength. Some proteins dissolve in cold water and when it is heated they gradually solidify or coagulate and rise to the surface. If you can control this process these proteins collect all the tiny particles that cloud a stock and carry them to the surface, which makes the stock or broth perfectly clear.

Ingredients To Help Keep A Stock/Broth Clear

  • Clearmeat or Clarification is the mixture of ingredients we use to clarify a stock.
  • Lean ground meat is one of the major sources of protein that enables the clearmeat to do its job. It also gives the consommé flavor. The best piece of meat to consider using is the beef shank or shin beef, it is the most desirable meat because it is high in proteins called albumin that dissolve well in water and help in clarifying process. Chicken meat is used to clarify chicken consomme and it is better to use only egg whites for a fish consommé.
  • Egg whites are mostly albumin, so they greatly strengthen its clarifying power.
  • Mirepoix and other seasoning, flavoring ingredients are included because they add flavor to the finished consommé. They don’t help in the clarification process, but give solidity to the raft. The raft is coagulated clearmeat, floating in a solid mass on top of the consommé.
  • Acid ingredients like tomato products, lemon juice or white wine can be added because the acidity helps coagulate the protein. It is not mandatory to use the acid products in the consommé, because the heat will coagulate the protein any way.

How To Make A Consommé Properly:

  1. Start with a flavored, cold, strong stock or broth. If your stock or broth is weak, reduce it until it is concentrated enough and then cool it before going any further.
  2. Select a heavy stockpot or soup pot, I recommend one with a spigot at the bottom. The spigot helps you to drain off the finished consommé without disturbing the raft.
  3. Combine the clearmeat ingredients in the soup pot and mix them well.
  4. Gradually add the cold, degreased stock or broth and mix well with the clearmeat. The stock or broth must be cold so it doesn’t cook the proteins on contact. Mixing distributes the dissolved proteins throughout the stock so they can collect all the impurities more easily.
  5. Set the pot over a moderately low fire and let it come to a simmer very slowly.
  6. Stir the contents occasionally so the clearmeat circulates throughout the stock or broth and does not burn on the bottom.
  7. When the simmering point is near, stop stirring. The clearmeat will rise to the surface and form a raft.
  8. Move pot to lower heat so the liquid maintains a slow simmer. Do not cover. Boiling will break up the raft and cloud the consommé.
  9. Let simmer 1 1/2 hours without disturbing the raft.
  10. Strain the consommé through a china cap lined with several layers of cheesecloth. If you are not using a stockpot with a spigot, ladle the consommé out carefully without breaking up the raft. Let the liquid drain through the cheesecloth by gravity. Do not force it or fine particles will pass through and cloud the consommé.
  11. Degrease, remove all traces of fat from the surface. Strips of clean brown paper can be used to pass across the surface to absorb every last speck of fat without absorbing much consommé.
  12. Adjust seasonings; kosher salt is better to use than regular table salt, because it has no impurities or additives that could cloud the stock or broth.

Emergency Actions:

  1. Clarifying hot stock. If you don’t have time to cool the stock or broth properly before clarifying, cool as much as you can. Even 10 minutes in a cold water bath will help. Then mix ice cubes or crushed ice with the clearmeat. This will help keep it from coagulating when the hot stock or broth hits it.
  2. Clarifying without meat. You can clarify a stock or broth with egg whites alone. Use at least 3 to 4 egg whites per gallon of stock or broth, plus a mirepoix if you want.
  3. Failed clarification. If your clarification process failed it is most likley because you let it boil, but if you want to rescue it, strain the consomme then cool it as much as possible, then slowly add it to a mixture of ice cubes and egg whites. Then carefully return it to a simmer.
  4. Poor color. It is possible to correct a pale consomme by adding a few drops of caramel color to the finished soup. Check the color of teh stock or broth before clarification, if it is too pale cut an onion in half and place it cut side down on a flattop range until it is black, or char it under a broiler. Add this to the clearmeat, the caramelized sugar of the onion will color the stock.

Vegetable Soups

Clear vegetable soups are made from a clear stock or broth. Most vegetable soups are made from meat or poultry stock or broth and meatless or vegetarian soups are made from vegetable broth or water.

How To Make A Vegetable Soup Properly:

  1. Start with a clear, flavorful stock or broth.
  2. Select vegetables and other ingredients you will prefer to have in your vegetable soup. Five to six vegetables are usually enough.
  3. Try to cut vegetables in even sizes as possible. This will help in even cooking and an attractive appearance. Pieces should be large enough to identify but small enough to eat with one bite on a spoon.
  4. Cooking vegetables slowly in a little butter before combining with liquid improves their flavor and gives the soup a mellower, richer taste.
  5. Cook starches like grains and pasta separately and add to the soup later. Cooking them in the soup will make the vegetable soup cloudy. Potatoes can be cooked directly in the soup, but they should be rinsed of excess starch after cutting if you want to keep the soup as clear as possible.
  6. Observe different cooking times. Add long cooking vegetables first and short cooking vegetables near the end. Some vegetables like tomatoes should be added to the hot soup only after it is removed from the fire.
  7. Do not overcook.

THICK SOUPS

Clarity is not an issue when comes to thick soups. They are thickened either by adding a thickening agent like a roux, or by pureeing.

Purees are soups that are naturally thickened by pureeing one or more of their ingredients. Purees are normally based on starchy ingredients and can be made from dried legumes, like split pea soup, or from vegetables with a starchy ingredient. They are not as smooth and creamy as cream soups.

Cream soups are soups that are thickened with roux, beurre manie, liaison, or another added thickening agents like milk or cream. Cream soups are similar to veloute and bechamel sauces and can be made by diluting and flavoring either of the two mother sauces.

Bisques soups are thickened soups made from shellfish. They usually are prepared like cream soups and most of the time are finished with cream.

Chowders are hearty soups made from fish, shellfish or vegetables. They are made in many different ways but usually contain milk and potatoes.

Cream Soups

Curdling is a common problem to deal with when preparing cream soups, because cream soups contain milk or cream or both. The heat when cooking cream soups and the acidity of many of the other soup ingredients are the causes of cream soups curdling. Roux and other starch thickeners stabilize milk and cream to help avoid cream soups from curdling.

Keeping Cream Soups From Curdling:

  1. Do not combine milk and simmering soup stock without the presence of roux or other starch. Thicken the stock before adding milk. Thicken the milk before adding it to the soup.
  2. Do not add cold milk or cream to simmering soup. Heat the milk in a separate saucepan. Temper the milk by gradually adding some of the hot soup to it. Then add it to the rest of the soup.
  3. Do not boil soups after milk or cream has been added.

Quality For Cream Soups

  1. Thickness of cream soups should be about the consistency of heavy cream. It shouldn’t be too thick.
  2. Texture of cream soups should be smooth, no grains or lumps.
  3. Taste of cream soups should have a distinct flavor of the main ingredient. No floury taste from uncooked roux.

How To Make Cream Soups Properly

  1. Prepare a veloute sauce or béchamel sauce using a roux.
  2. Prepare the main flavoring ingredients. Cut vegetables into thin slices and sweat them in butter about 5 minutes to develop flavor. Make sure not to brown them. Green leafy vegetables must be blanched before sweating them in butter. Cut poultry and seafood into small pieces for simmering.
  3. Add flavoring ingredients from step 2 to the veloute or béchamel and simmer until tender. One exception is a finished tomato puree, it is added for cream of tomato, no further cooking is necessary.
  4. Skim any fat or scum that may come to the surface of the cream soup.
  5. Puree the soup using a food mill or an immersion blender and then strain it through a fine china cap. Or you can strain it through a fine china cap, pressing down hard on the solid ingredients to force out the liquid and some of the pulp to make the soup very smooth.
  6. Add hot white stock or milk to thin the soup to proper consistency.
  7. Adjust seasonings.
  8. You can finish it with a liaison or heavy cream when you are ready to serve it.

Or

  1. Sweat vegetable ingredients in butter
  2. Add flour and stir well to make a roux. Cook a roux for a few minutes, but do not let it start to brown.
  3. Add white stock, beating it with a whip as you slowly pour it in
  4. Add any vegetables, other solid ingredients, or flavorings that were not sautéed in the beginning.
  5. Simmer until all ingredients are tender.
  6. Skim any fat that has risen to the surface.
  7. Puree and strain.
  8. Add hot white stock or milk to thin soup to proper consistency.
  9. Adjust seasonings.
  10. Finish with heavy cream or liaison.

Another Way To Make A Cream Soup:

  1. Bring white stock to a boil.
  2. Add vegetables and other flavoring ingredients. You can slowly cook some or all of the vegetables in butter for a few minutes to develop flavors.
  3. Simmer until all ingredients are tender.
  4. Thicken with roux, beurre manie, or other starch.
  5. Simmer until no starch taste remains.
  6. Skim fat from surface.
  7. Puree and strain
  8. Add hot or tempered milk or cream or both. A light cream sauce can be used to avoid thinning the soup of curdling the milk.
  9. Adjust seasonings.

Puree Soups

Puree soups are made by simmering dried or fresh vegetables in stock or water, then pureeing the soup.

How To Make A Puree Soup Properly:

  1. Sweat mirepoix or other fresh vegetables in fat.
  2. Add liquid.
  3. Add dried or starchy vegetables.
  4. Simmer until vegetables are tender. Fresh vegetables should be completely cooked but not overcooked or falling apart.
  5. Puree soup in a food mil or with an immersion blender.
  6. Puree soups are generally not bound with an added starch but rely on the starches present in the vegetables. Some fresh vegetable purees may be thickened with a little starch if you like.
  7. Add cream if the recipe calls for it.
  8. Adjust seasoning.