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Let’s say you’re home, it’s very cold out, you’re craving soup, and you don’t feel like going to the grocery store. Some might see this as a hopeless situation. I see it as an opportunity.
You can turn almost anything into soup. The chickpeas in your cupboard? Those can be a soup. The celery root that you bought to make that Ottolenghi recipe that you gave up on? That can be soup too. Eggplant can be soup, spinach can be soup, even the cheddar cheese in your cheese drawer can be soup; just add broccoli. Or beer.
For the purposes of this column, let’s focus on the kind of thrown-together soup that I like to make: a hearty, vegetable-packed soup with beans and greens and a little Parmesan on top. Do I shop for those things? Sometimes. Usually, though, I just see what I have lying around and go from there.
Your starting point needs to be fat. More often than not, that fat will be extra-virgin olive oil. But if you want to shake things up a bit, you can use butter (ideal in a squash soup), you can render bacon or sausage (excellent in a lentil soup), you can even use lard, if you’re the kind of person who keeps lard around, in which case, respect.
Once you heat your fat, you add your aromatics. In France, you would add mirepoix. In Italy, you would add soffritto. The main thing is that you season at this stage with salt because you don’t want Tom Colicchio showing up to your kitchen saying, “You didn’t develop any flavor.” (He always says that on Top Chef.) The aromatics don’t have to stop there: like garlic? Add tons of garlic. You could also add ginger here, chili flakes, green pepper (if you’re going for a Cajun vibe, in which case omit the carrots – then you’ll have what’s called “The Holy Trinity.”)
The concept here is that you’re flavoring the fat with the aromatics and then that flavored fat will infuse whatever you add next. If you were making Ribollita (Italian kale and cabbage soup), you could add a bunch of sliced cabbage and Tuscan kale at this stage, being sure to season, stirring all around and then, when it’s softened, adding water or stock — just enough to cover (season again). Then add a can of drained white beans and let it all simmer until everything comes together, for about an hour. If it gets too thick, add more stock/water.
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