I was served a couple of miserable soups lately and it’s a sad sight when they come out presented badly for starters, never mind their taste or texture not delivering either. Soup really is a culinary basic and it’s one of the first things we learn in professional cooking and I would firmly believe if a soup is done right there will be very little wrong with the rest of the menu. At this time of year on cold days nothing beats a good bowl of hot and hearty soup to warm you up, be it a smooth, creamy, clear or chunky version.
There may be thousands of recipes but the principals are similar. You need enough good and fresh basic ingredients; the correct preparation steps need to be followed and it has to be just cooked long enough. Then the taste needs to be checked a few times, the texture and consistency adjusted as necessary and the colour should be appealing. Finally the temperature should be just hot enough so you can actually take the first spoonful without burning your mouth. Like coffee if it’s boiled it’s spoiled.
In olden days the soup station of a kitchen was as important as the sauce section and often with the same chef, great care was given to making sure the essential element of a good stock was made in advance so the sound base of either recipe would be substantial and provide a successful end product. Only in the high end dining kitchens today will you see half a dozen different stocks being made fresh every week. Everywhere else stock comes from a packet and it’s laced with salt and artificial ingredients.
Even though we learned how to make stock in hotel school it was only in my first serious college placement afterwards that I learned the importance of using properly prepared veal, chicken, game, vegetable, fish and shellfish stocks to make the most exquisite soup and sauces. Everything from the age and chopping of bones and shells, to the cooking time and reducing process was meticulously followed. The head chef had just come from working in the three star Michelin Troisgros restaurant in France so there was to be no shortcuts and it was the best training possible for me as a young fresh catering college graduate.
Progressing over that summer to actually making the soups and then sauces, I would never be able to come down from that level of perfection again though of course it was not easy to replicate in any subsequent kitchens when fresh stocks were not used. These days when I taste a soup or sauce I instinctively know if that layer of fresh stock is present in the recipe or when the flavour is from a packet and if too much is used making it overly salty. I often have to use the water, milk and butter on the table to amend the flavour as a disgruntled diner.
The word soup actually comes from supping and supper and the original soup bowl would have been a round loaf of bread scooped out in the middle for a meaty broth to be poured in and then you ate the lot. Category wise they range from conventional classics of meat, seafood or vegetable flavoured broths, consommés, veloutes, crèmes and purees to fruity and sour or fermented types with some even served cold. Most places do not even bother making soups or sauces at all now but just buy the finished thing in readymade to heat up.
When places do make soups using leftover cooked veggies from the previous day the experience can be just as bad from that whiffy stale aroma. The bought supermarket soups range enormously in quality with some decent fresh varieties available but nothing beats a table with a homemade tureen of soup that you produced from scratch with all the care and attention it deserves. So as the cold days and nights approach, maybe it’s time you had a go at one of the most wonderful dishes in food.
