Vegetable Soup

DAD’ll admit it. Vegetable soup can be a little thin and sometimes bitter or acidic. It doesn’t need to be that way. This recipe brings other, non-veg, ingredients to the dish to give it flavor balance and make it a hearty enough soup to stand on its own.

Vegetable soup.

Canned tomatoes usually need sugar to balance the acidity of the tomatoes. Try this as an experiment. Dump a can of diced or crush tomatoes into an anodized aluminum or stainless steel pot and heat them (never into a bare aluminum pot). Then try a spoonful. Not unpleasant but not good huh? Now, start adding sweetener, sugar or your family’s favorite kind. As you add sweetener you’ll notice the tomatoes begin to taste better as the sweetness balances their acid. But, even here as a soup it wouldn’t be very fulfilling. It needs something more. It needs something more than other flavors; it needs body. Trust the NF Dad, you can’t get to heartiness on spice alone.

It needs fat.

EVOO is a good fat choice, but it doesn’t always satisfy Dad. It just doesn’t stay emulsified. Beef fat is okay, but since he isn’t making beef and vegetable soup he needs to look elsewhere. He wants dairy, and sour cream plays very well with tomatoes. So add a dollop, mix, and try it again. Good huh? Depending on how much you add you might even think it is great. Now you have a base on which to build a vegetable soup.

This particular soup substituted, added, and deleted ingredients based on what Dad had on hand in the root cellar and pantry. The Twins needs necessitate economizing so this particular recipe is likely unlike any you’ve seen before.

2 16 oz. cans of diced tomatoes drained.

1 4 oz. can of tomato paste.

4 4 oz. cans of mushrooms drained

2 zucchini sliced

1 bag of fresh spinach

2 medium onions diced

2 orange and red bell peppers diced

1 bag of carrots, peeled and sliced

3 hearts of celery sliced

8 oz. vegetable stock

8 oz. roasted red pepper stock

Better than Bouillon beef base

Water to dilute the beef base, follow directions provided on jar.

Basil, oregano, parsley flake,

Sour cream, sugar, garlic powder, all as necessary

Into a crock, he dumped all of the ingredients except the “as necessary” ingredients. He measured out and used enough water to cover the veg. He treated the veg stock and red pepper stock as water for beef base measurement purposes. He totaled the liquid ingredients in ounces and added the recommended amount of beef base.

He brought them to a boil and tasted for salinity. Instead of just dumping salt into the soup, he added chicken bouillon cubes; why not invite some more flavors? He returned it to a boil and checked them for sweetness/acidity balance. He added some Splenda, tasted it, and added some more until he found the balance he sought. Then he simmered it uncovered for a few hours to evaporate the excess water and concentrate the flavors. After the basil and oregano had rehydrated, and the carrots and celery had softened, he began to add the sour cream until he liked the balance. Then he turned off the crock, added the garlic powder to his and Mom’s liking and let it sit for a half hour before declaring it done.

There you have it, a vegetable soup satisfying enough to be a meal. And, as the NF Mom says, “You can’t get this in a can.” No you can’t.

Notes:

Dad got lazy this time, but he knows that to get the carrots uniformly cooked, the slices need to have uniform mass. The best way to do this with a mandolin (creates uniform slices) and by cutting the carrots in half first, then cutting the larger end in half, and then slicing on the mandolin. Because he didn’t care to make the effort (Liesel needed huggy-lovey), he cut them with a kitchen knife instead.

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