Cooking Basics: Soup Base

I didn't think I'd be back to the Cooking Basics series so quickly, but we made soup tonight, and so I thought I might as well share!

(Especially since Husband is busy with school stuff and I'm bored.  And there's only so much Les Miserables reading you can do before you start getting overwhelmed.  Have you seen that book?  Nearly a thousand pages!  This parenthetical is really getting long, right?)

Tonight's soup is a Vegetable Chowder.  Super fitting for a light but filling meal.  And even though soup often feels like a winter deal, I like a light vegetable soup for summer, too!  Especially paired with some grilled meats or a fresh salad.

So, here's how a standard soup base goes.  You ready?  I'm ready.

First, start out with your mirepoix.  That's just a fancy French word for your chopped base vegetables, celery, carrot, and onion.  These vegetables provide a good base flavor for everything else you'll add to your soup pot.  So you start with a good sized glug of fat (I usually go with olive oil, but sometimes, when I want to get crazy, I'll add a touch of bacon grease!  Mmm.)  Make sure to salt and pepper at each step!

But since this is a veggie chowder, we're going to need more veggies than your simple mirepoix.  I also chopped up some broccoli and zucchini.  The broccoli went in first, since it's a tougher vegetable, followed by the zucchini a minute or two later, since it is soft and will cook faster than the other veggies.  Again with a little salt and pepper.

Next up, add the flavor!  Herbs and spices and garlic all up in.  I added a few minced garlic cloves, along with some red pepper flakes and thyme leaves.  These herbs and spices will carry a lot of your soup flavor, so don't be too gentle with them!  It's nice to add the herbs and spices and let them saute with the veggies for 30 seconds to a minute.  Everything gets the high heat of the pan to bloom and develop, but a short saute means you won't burn those precious flavors.

Now, add your liquid! Usually, this is some kind of stock or broth.  I almost always have chicken stock on hand.  Remember when I showed you how to do a crock pot chicken stock?  You can make pretty much any flavored stock with this same method.  A fish stock?  Use fish bones!  A beef stock?  Use beef bones!  A shrimp stock?  Use shrimp peels!  You get the picture.  When you're in a pinch, you can use water.  Though the extra flavor of a stock is really nice.  Bring your soup to a boil, then lower the heat to a simmer.  All the flavors will meld, and your herbs, spices, and veggies will make that broth/water delicious!

But first!  If you want a starch, add it now, before the veggies are completely cooked through.  And by starch, I mean potatoes, pasta, or even beans.  You want to give them plenty of time to soften and soak up flavor, too!  This is where timing comes in to play.  If you're cooking with beans or lentils, those can take upwards of an hour to cook.  If that's the case, you'll want to wait to add your soft veggies (such as broccoli or zucchini) til the beans are mostly cooked through. If you're using small-chopped potatoes or pasta, those take 10-20 minutes, and they can be added after the soft veggies.

Once your veggies (and starch) are all softened, you have a delicious and flavorful soup!  Go you!

BUT, we're not necessarily done.  Oh no.

Want a cream soup?  Of course you do, they're delicious.  Add the cream or milk mixture.  Then continue to let your soup cook for another couple of minutes for the cream to get fully incorporated.

This is also where you can add any cheese or pre-cooked meats or frozen veggies like peas or corn.  You just need to warm those things through, and it will only take a minute or two in that hot, hot soup.  But wait!  If you want a blended soup, do that BEFORE you add the meat.  That's very important.

Lastly, don't forget the toppings.  Have you ever noticed that the toppings MAKE the soup?  Add a little green onion or bacon.  Add some grated cheese.  Add some crispy tortillas or pre-cooked, warmed meat.  Add some fresh parsley or cilantro.  This really is the fun part!

And that's it!  You're all prepared to make a delicious soup.  Any flavor you want!

And here's my vegetable chowder.

Cheesy Vegetable Chowder

Serves 4-6

2 Tbs. olive oil (or bacon grease)

1 stalk celery, chopped

2 carrots, diced

1 medium onion, diced

1 cup broccoli florets

1 zucchini, chopped

3-4 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes

1 tsp. fresh thyme leaves

4 cups chicken broth

1-2 potatoes, diced

1 cup half and half

1/2 cup shredded cheddar

1/3 cup grated Parmesan

salt and pepper

optional, shredded cheddar, green onion, and/or bacon for topping

Heat a soup pot over medium heat.  Add the olive oil, then add celery, carrot, and onion.  Season with salt and pepper, and saute for 3-5 minutes.  Add broccoli florets and saute 1-2 minutes longer.  Then stir in the zucchini.  Salt and pepper well.  Add the garlic, red pepper flakes, and thyme, and saute for 30 seconds.

Pour in the chicken broth, and bring to a boil.  Once boiling, add the potato, lower heat, and simmer for 15 minutes, or until potatoes are soft.

Stir in the half and half, and allow to incorporate for a minute.  At this point, you can use a blender or immersion blender to blend soup, if desired.  I like to use my immersion blender, and go about half way, so there are still some vegetable chunks.  Then stir in the cheeses until melted through.

Ladle the soup into bowls, and top with toppings of your choice.  Enjoy!

We ate this with shrimp grilled over bacon grease.  Oh yes we did.

Cooking Basics: Simple Cheese Sauce

Hey readers!  Lacy and I were talking about what to cook for dinner, and Lacy mentioned that she doesn't make pasta because canned sauces don't taste great (I agree) and she doesn't know how to make a homemade sauce or what recipes are good.  I, on the other hand, love to make homemade sauces!  Pasta is one of my favorites for a really simple dinner.  It's a fallback of mine when I don't have anything else in the house.  Because all you need for a pasta sauce is a few pantry staples.

So, Lacy suggested that I start a "Cooking Basics" series on this here blog.  So you, my fellow readers, can also make delicious pasta a weeknight simple meal!  But let's not stop at pasta sauces.  I'm hoping to also include a soup base, basic desserts, meats (I'll probably get husband on board for that one), etc.  If you have any requests, let me know!

First up?  Cheese sauces!

I'm going with a Parmesan cheese sauce (very similar to Alfredo sauce).

The first step to a basic cheese sauce is to make a roux.  Not La Roux, but a roux.  (But Bulletproof is a super great song, though.  And now I'll listen to that while I finish this post.)

A roux is equal parts of flour and fat mixed together.  The best things to use are all purpose flour and butter, but I have used olive oil as my fat in the past, and that has worked fairly well.  Using any other flour or fat?  I make no guarantees.  But try if it you'd like!

Get the butter beginning to melt in a deep skillet or pot over medium heat, then pour your flour right on top.  Use a fork or whisk to combine the two, (I often have to tilt my pan to keep the melting butter in the same corner as the flour) and let them cook together for a short minute to let the flour taste cook out.

Next step, add your milk or cream.  An all cream dish will be rather heavy (but incredibly delicious, of course) whereas an all milk dish will be lighter, thinner, and won't quite cling to the pasta in the same way.  If you're trying to save calories, go ahead with all milk, but you may need to up the flour amount in your roux, or add additional cheese to add some body to the sauce.

Another calorie saving trick I like is to use all milk, but add a good dollop of cream cheese.  It adds creaminess without all the calories of heavy cream.

In this recipe, I went with half heavy cream, and half 1% milk.  Feel free to use whatever milk or cream combination you have on hand.  Whisk the milk into your roux so that no roux chunks remain and everything is smooth.  If you want to add some spices or herbs, here's the place to do it.  I added a clove of garlic, a touch of nutmeg, and pepper.  Hold off on the salt since cheese, especially Parmesan, can be salty.

Once your roux and milk have cooked together and thickened up, add the grated cheese.  I went with a Parmesan, and for dense cheeses like Parmesan (or Asiago, Mizithra, etc.) you'll want to do about half as much cheese as you did milk (example, 1 cup of milk to 1/2 cup cheese).  For softer cheeses such as cheddar, Gruyere, etc., the ratio is closer to 1 part to 1 part.  For example, when you make cheese sauce for macaroni and cheese, you're usually using softer cheese like cheddar.  Then you'd have about a cup of grated cheddar to a cup of milk.

Whisk the sauce with the cheese until your cheese has completely melted in.  And there you go!  You've made a cheese sauce!

A Parmesan cheese sauce differs only slightly from an Alfredo sauce in that an Alfredo sauce typically does not contain a roux.  It's simply straight cream mixed with Parmesan cheese and garlic.  So, if you're reading between the lines, that means this Parmesan cream sauce tastes nearly exactly like Alfredo, but with less fat.  AND if you go the milk and cream cheese route I mentioned earlier, that's even less calories.  You're welcome.

To serve this pasta, we went with a fettuccine pasta, and ribboned up and sauted some carrots.

Isn't that a cool way to prepare pasta?  I first saw the idea over at TheKitchn, via The Forest Feast, and fell in love.  The ribboned carrots add a nice sweetness and crunch and color.

Both Husband and I are very on board with this sauce and pasta preparation.

You should get on board, too!

Parmesan Cream Sauce over Ribboned Carrots and Fettuccine

Serves 2

3 carrots, peeled

4 oz fettuccine

1 Tbs. butter

1 Tbs. flour

1/2 c. milk

1/2 c. heavy cream

1 garlic clove, minced

1/8 tsp. nutmeg

1/4 tsp. pepper

1/2 c. grated Parmesan

salt to taste

Use vegetable peeler to peel carrots into ribbon.  Set a deep skillet over medium heat.  Add a glug of olive oil, and saute carrot ribbons for 2 to 3 minutes until just softened.  Season with salt and pepper, and remove from heat. Set aside carrots on a separate plate.

Bring a pot of water to boil, salt the water well, and add in the fettuccine pasta.

In the same deep skillet you used for the carrots, over medium heat, add the butter and flour, and mix together with a fork to create a roux (or a paste).  Allow to cook for 30 seconds to a minute.  Pour in the milk and cream slowly, whisking as you go to combine the roux with the liquid evenly. Add the garlic, nutmeg and pepper.  Let cook for 3-5 minutes until slightly thickened.  Add the cheese and whisk well til the cheese is melted through.  Taste, and add salt if necessary.

By this time, your fettuccine should be just al dente.  Drain, and add the noodles to your sauce, allowing to cook for another minute.  Add in your reserved carrots, and combine well with sauce and noodles.  Serve with a little fresh Parmesan right on top!

And remember to submit your ideas for any cooking basics you want to learn!