Homemade Soup

Oops, I forgot -- you also need an onion with the skin still on it to add to the soup at the beginning. Discard onion at the end (according to my mother-in-law it adds color????).

And, if your Hungarian like my husband, you might want to take the marrow from the bones at the end and spread it on rye toast and eat it. Personally, I think it's kind of weird.

I've heard that the liquid from canned vegetables should be saved and used as a basis for soup. I have never tried this, and I'm sure nobody else around here uses canned vegetables, so. . . .

Hi Bandylu
I'm a winter cooker myself. I like to make large batches of stuff and load up our large standing freezer. I make my own chili, chicken soup, beef stew, pea soup, etc... and that's just the soups I make.

Here's my pea soup recipe

1 cup dry split peas
4 cups chicken broth
1 to 1 and a half pounds smoked pork hocks or meaty ham bone
a quarter teaspoon dried marjoram, crushed
1 bay leaf
half a cup chopped carrots
half a cup chopped celery
half a cup chopped onions

Rince peas. In a large saucepan combine peas, broth, meat, marjoram, bay leaf, and dash of pepper. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Cover; simmer for one hour. Stir occasionally. Remove meat. When cool enough to handle, cut meat off bone and coarsely chop. Discard bone. Return meat to saucepan. Stir in carrots, celery, and onion. Return to boiling; reduce heat. Cover; simmer for 20 to 30 minutes or until vegetables are crisp tender. Discard bay leaf. Makes about 4 servings.

When I make a big batch to freeze I make 6 times this recipe.

Hey Roger :-D
I never heard that. If I used canned vegetables I'd try it.

Gezzy, I was just thinking about pea/ham soup. Now I'm really hungry.

Yum ... those recipes sound good. I love homemade soup but haven't made any in quite a while. I think it's time to do it again!

Hi Mikey :-D
Sorry about that, LOL

Hi Chatoyant
Let us know what you make :-D

I love homemade soup and make it often. Gezzy, I like your pea soup recipe. (I'd leave out the ham...I'm a veg.) I make lots of versions of pea and lentil soups, but my favorite is black bean. I have learned some tricks that help make it better. One is to use dried beans and soak them overnight, no matter how rushed I am. Then, a key point, I cook them for the first hour with no seasonings or salt. After an hour, I drain the beans and add stock to cover the beans by an inch or so, then I add all sorts of stuff: chopped onion and celery, minced red sweet pepper, (all sauteed a bit first,) a chopped carrot for color, lots and lots of minced garlic, some cumin, lemon juice, and, most important, some chopped chiles in adobo (right out of the can.) I add salsa to the soup sometimes, if it lacks sparkle. After the soup has cooked for an hour, I take a few cups of it and blend to a rough puree and add back to the soup.

I serve this with sides of sour cream, chopped sweet onion, salsa, and shredded cheese. It is a meal in a bowl, needing only some good bread.

When our power went out for a day in the ice storm that hit the Carolinas, I made a pot of soup on my gas cooktop and put in everything from the fridge that I thought would go bad. It was a great soup! I used cabbage, a carrot, spinach, frozen corn, onions, and other odds and ends. To thicken it, I opened a can of white kidney beans and crushed them through a sieve. That made the soup like a minestrone. I was good the first night and, after the power came back on, I whizzed some of it in the blender and added it back. We're still eating it!

Soups, especially thick soups are great winterdishes.
Bandylu2, marrow bone on dark bread is delicious.
Ever tried marrow bone dumplings in your soup recipe?
Frittatas, meat strudel, liver dumplings, cream of wheat dumplings?
Your soup is cooked in my house at least once a week and is used as stock.
Other favorites are: potatoe soup, lentil soup, Tuscany winter minestrone.
All these soups are followed by something sweet, like applestrudel, fruit dumplings, or filled pancakes.

The last time Setanta was in town he bought some dried black eyed peas for me to make soup with the next time he's in town. It'll be an adventure.

My soups often tend to be some variation on chicken/veg with either noodles or rice.

I'm cooking soups-especially at winter time- quite often, add a Westphalian pea-soup to the three Ul metioned.

Try this lentil soup:
Lentil Soup
Ingredients:

1 pound of lentils
½ pound of carrots
½ pound of celeriac (celery root)
1/3 pound of leek
1 parsley root
1 pound of dried prunes
½ pound of smoked ham (uncooked)
½ pound of bacon
4 medium onions
1 polish sausage per person
vinegar
sugar
4 tbsp of shortening
salt and pepper
Clean lentils and soak in plenty of cold water. Cube vegetables, brown briefly, and add to lentils. After 1-1½ hours, add soaked prunes and cubed ham. After another 20 minutes of slow boiling, add polish sausages and simmer everything for another ten minutes. Cut bacon into small cubes and brown together with finely chopped onions. Add vinegar and sugar to achieve sweet-and-sour taste, add salt and pepper and pour soup into a bowl. Pour bacon-onion mix over the top of the soup. (You may serve it with boiled potatoes.)


Westphalian/Dutch Pea Soup

Rinse 1 lb split peas and soak for a few hours (best: over night) in cold water. Drain well.
Bring the split peas, 10 oz spareribs, pork brisket or a mixture of these
meats and 8 oz of cubed bacon to the boil with about 7 cups of water.
Meanwhile, wash 1 lb leeks and slice fairly thickly; peel 5 stalks of celery
and chop or dice; peel 1 large carrot and cut into cubes or slices; wash 6
sprigs of celery leaves or parsley, chop half and reserve for garnish.
Stir the prepared vegetables and whole celery/parsley leaves into the soup
and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste (take it easy
on the salt since bacon is naturally salty). Cover the pan and simmer for at
least 2 hours or until the meat is tender. Stir the soup occasionally and add
a little extra water if necessary. The soup should be thick!
Remove the spareribs (or other meat) from the pan, discard the bones and chop
the flesh.
Return the chopped meat to the soup, add one sliced 10-oz cooked smoked
boiling sausage and garnish with a little chopped celery leaves or parsley.
Serve with rye or pumpernickel bread.

Store the rest in the fridge. Heat it up the next day again - you'll see, it even tastes better!

My favorite soup is Paul Prudhomme's cajun red beans and rice. Even though it's pretty thick when it's done, it still is technically a soup.

Hi, my vote is for Oxtail Soup. I learned this from a dear pal, a Polish veterinarian, so I've always thought that this soup originates from Germany or Poland. I did not appreciate it quite enough at the time to pay close attention to the recipe, but I did search online for one a few years ago and ended up with my all-time fav soup. If you go to Arlene's Recipes Online site, it is so huge now that the soup category has now gotten over 3,000 recipes, of which about 12 are for this soup. If anyone is interested, I will be happy to send along my variation chosen. I must modestly say (lol) that the beef is much more flavorful and tender than a filet mignon and a prime rib portion! Were it not that oxtail bones run a bit more expensive than I would like, I'd make it monthly. But, on the bright side, apparently where I am living at present, folks are not in demand of this delicacy, so at times I find the price per pound just fine!

Look here for a great time ("for a great time, click....")
Recipe Source soups - 3,000+ of them!

Recipe ArchiveSoar: The Searchable Online Source of Recipes

"We've organized our recipes into two major groups - recipes primarily identified with an ethnic cuisine are broken down by region and ethnic group, while other recipes are categorized by the type of dish"

Thanks Kara
I found that recipe last year and I love it :-D

Walter
That recipe sounds wonderful :-D

no vegetarians in the bunch of ya, eh?

Does anyone have a dumpling resicpe? I love dumplings. And, when you're a sort-of-vegitarian, you need something with bulk in your soup. Roger, I use canned vegies sometimes because I find that fresh vegies often go bad when I'm just cooking for myself.

Littlek
I think Kara mentioned that she was a vegetarian.

Hmmmm, must have missed that. I'll read more carefully later. Thanks Gezzy.