Friday open thread: soup season
Feb. 21st, 2025 05:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Actually, it's not really soup season ('high soup season'?), given that it was 16 degrees celcius today and the crocus bulbs are starting to bloom. However, this has been a very soup-heavy winter, and a prompt like this is about all I can manage at the moment, and thus:
What are your favourite types of soup?
My favourites are definitely the flavour- and texture-rich soups of southeast Asia: laksa, pho, and so on. I'm not such a fan of cooking them myself, however — but if they're available, I will almost always eat them.
When it comes to soups I can cook myself, I have various variants of chicken-noodle soup (Chinese, Malaysian, and Indonesian recipes) which I enjoy a lot. I also love various Turkish soups involving lentils, minestrone soup, a variety of takes on borsch, and a nostalgic, vegetable-and-legume-heavy soup that my mum used to make in industrial quantities throughout the Canberran winter when I was a child (ingredients included dried mixed legumes, potato, green beans, parsnip, carrot, leek, and barley), which I ate for lunch at school in a thermos flask, and as afternoon tea to fuel an evening of gymnastics training, and which a friend of mine with whom I used to carpool to gymnastics still raves about, because she ate so much of it at my place en route to the gym.
I could probably go on, but I think that's enough of a starting point. Talk to me about soup!
What are your favourite types of soup?
My favourites are definitely the flavour- and texture-rich soups of southeast Asia: laksa, pho, and so on. I'm not such a fan of cooking them myself, however — but if they're available, I will almost always eat them.
When it comes to soups I can cook myself, I have various variants of chicken-noodle soup (Chinese, Malaysian, and Indonesian recipes) which I enjoy a lot. I also love various Turkish soups involving lentils, minestrone soup, a variety of takes on borsch, and a nostalgic, vegetable-and-legume-heavy soup that my mum used to make in industrial quantities throughout the Canberran winter when I was a child (ingredients included dried mixed legumes, potato, green beans, parsnip, carrot, leek, and barley), which I ate for lunch at school in a thermos flask, and as afternoon tea to fuel an evening of gymnastics training, and which a friend of mine with whom I used to carpool to gymnastics still raves about, because she ate so much of it at my place en route to the gym.
I could probably go on, but I think that's enough of a starting point. Talk to me about soup!
no subject
Date: 2025-02-21 06:22 pm (UTC)Needless to say, I did not eat soup for many years after this. What finally got me to stop avoiding it was northeast England winters. James made a hearty potato soup frequently, which was such a comfort. I also started going to a café near the university on days that I was on campus which specialised in daily soups - their carrot and ginger soup was such a joy.
So I'm not widely versed in soups still, but I'd love to try some of the ones you mentioned. For now, my favourite is a very basic but delicious French onion soup! Anything with a solid layer of cheese on top is a gold star in my book.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2025-02-21 07:42 pm (UTC)- (First because it's the one I had most recently) Czech garlic soup (with or without pork bits). I prefer the Czech and Slovak versions without cream, but the (Polish, I think?) version with cream is also pretty good.
- Clam chowder
- Fish soups. My definitive version is the homemade one with my grandfather's fresh catch and a lot of bay leaves and pepper, but I've enjoyed other spicy fish soup (no tomato base) varieties I've tried, e.g. I think a Jamaican one
- Borsch, but specifically the kind my great grandmother used to make (with pampushki/garlic rolls)
- Sopa Azteca / tortilla soup
- Pumpkin/squash bisque
- Zuppa toscana
- Pho (especially from this one hole in the wall place in Silicon Valley that everyone knew and everyone called "cheap pho")
And not seasonal, but I'm also a fan of some cold soups from the Old Country, especially Lithuanian Šaltibarščiai (cold beet soup which I know as rassol'nik)
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2025-02-21 10:08 pm (UTC)I like pho too but it took a while for me to warm up to it. This is mostly because my first encounter with pho was in a university basement during off hours, and it was not the best introduction.
My grandma, who apparently was a terrible cook, used to make this gizzard and chicken heart soup that I used to have all the time when I went over to her house. I loved it and make it myself every winter, but it's also like... got no seasonings in it outside of some carrots and celery so I suspect if I were to feed it to anyone else they wouldn't have anything nice to say about it.
Your mom's soup sounds delicious and filling!
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2025-02-21 11:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2025-02-22 12:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2025-02-22 01:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2025-02-22 07:50 am (UTC)But I like all sorts of soup! Here are my regular ones: yellow pea soup, nettle soup, kale soup, borscht, potato/leek soup (with optional Jerusalem artichoke), goulash-inspired soup, onion soup with grilled cheese and croutons, Thai-inspired rice noodle soup, bouillabaisse.
I mean to try making zurek one of these days. I had it in Poland and it was delicious.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2025-02-22 12:13 pm (UTC)A few faves this year: a North African veggie stew, ham-kale-and-white-bean, and the all-timer "orange soup," which is just every orange vegetable you have around roasted (carrots! squash! sweet potatoes! all of them!) and blended with garlic, red pepper or even hot sauce, and coconut milk.
We're making a turkey chili tonight.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2025-02-22 11:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2025-02-23 03:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2025-02-23 11:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2025-02-24 07:54 am (UTC)I mourn the amazing bak kut teh soup that a local chain restaurant stopped serving as their Tuesday special a few years ago. A rich, complex broth; pork ribs (which actually I could have taken/left, it was the rest that was amazing), shiitake mushrooms, fried tofu puffs, garlic and wolfberries.
But another restaurant at walking distance from work sells tom yum, which is still a great treat, especially as they don't finish it with coconut milk. I wish I found it easier to digest coconut milk, because I love it, but it does not love me, so soups with coconut milk are a cautious sometimes thing.
I like batch-cooking soup then having soup for breakfast. The current fridge soup is a soup that requires several stages. First, at some point, I need to make a pork dinner where the pork is stuffed with garlic and parsley and braised in white wine and stock with fennel seeds. This leaves a large amount of highly flavored braising liquid, which I then use as the basis of a lentil soup with whatever vegetables are on hand - usually carrot and celery, and this time I also diced and roasted some daikon and threw that in.
I was recently sick with something that started very mild, so I had energy to make a big batch of ham and pea soup. (Simmer ham hock in giant pot of water for a couple of hours, eventually take it out to cool and dice, meanwhile boil green/yellow split peas in the ham water, add some sauteed onions/carrots/celery, add the diced ham back in). This was especially great because the gelatin and the peas make the soup turn into rather firm Sludge when it is refrigerated. So, when I ate portions, rather than heating it up, I just took a couple of modest spoonfuls and poured boiling water over them and mixed this up, which was a great way of getting some nutrients and liquid while not taxing my stomach.
Other frequent soups at home:
-groundnut soup // basically peanut satay soup, with peanut butter and tomatoes and chili and a bit of sweet potato
-a very simple chicken soup that is just carrots, celery, parsnips, and chicken, flavored with dill
-a comforting winter soup of smoked fish and green/brown/puy lentils
-a citrusy tomato kale soup where I sautee some onion and LOTS OF GINGER AND GARLIC, dump canned tomatoes and a bit of vege stock on top, and also add a lot of shredded coconut that has been toasted to lightly brown (in frying pan or in oven) then bashed a bit so it's in quite small pieces. While the tomato is picking up the other flavors, I shred and beat up some kale leaves, then add them in for a final 15 minutes and squeeze at least half a lemon's worth of juice in. Or I guess you could do lime. This is a terrible soup if you prefer a smooth consistency but very nice if you don't mind having to chew bits of your soup.
I've never quite warmed to the texture or taste of barley, and I don't like batch-cooking soups with pasta because I don't like the texture of pasta much past al-dente (and it feels like it just gets too soft with all the cooking and reheating).
Oh! And I recently tried this beetroot-apple-ginger soup recipe and really liked it: https://andrealflavor.com/beetroot-and-apple-soup-with-ginger/
(no subject)
From: