When the temperature outside dips down low and your breath escapes you in a frosted breath against the crisp night air, what do you want more than anything? Answer: something to keep you warm.
Perhaps that is why soups and stews are so wildly popular during the autumn and winter seasons. The appeal of a warming dish that can fill you up as well is certainly tantalizing. And making soups and stews can be as easy and complex as you want them to be. They are also a great way to get rid of any excess ingredients that are in your kitchen.
Some soups reign supreme in this arena. Of course, chicken noodle soup is often a popular choice. A warm bowl of hearty chili with a side of skillet cornbread always sounds delightful of course. Broccoli and cheddar soup has taken the soup game by storm over the past few years. But there is so much more to soups than the classics. If you've had New England clam chowder, try Manhattan clam chowder. Minestrone soup is a popular Italian soup. Wonton soup is a creative soup that you can make at home (it's actually not as complicated as it looks or sounds). Crab and shrimp (or lobster even) bisques are smooth and tasty.
To make good soup is easy. Really you need only a few basic, key ingredients: a base (often broth or stock), seasonings/flavor profiles (are we feeling Caribbean or French today?) and the ingredients you want to use (what's in the kitchen that you can throw in the pot real quick?). Stews are almost the exact same template, but the only major difference is the base; stews are thicker, so keep that in mind when you making a stew, you have to thicken it up a little bit. An easy way to do that is to add a little bit of flour to the dish (this will also create a delicious gravy that captures all the flavor from the stew that you can skim off and save for later.
Another piece of advice: consider your ingredients and knife cuts. Everything doesn't cook at the same speed. Some vegetables and meat cook faster than others, so throwing them all into a soup pot at the same time could result in mushy and disintegrated ingredients, or undercooked ingredients. This also stems from how you cut your food to cook; the larger the pieces, the longer it takes to cook. Plus, you don't want huge chunks of food floating in your soup. Smaller cuts are better because it means being able to fit more onto the spoon (and don't you want a punch of flavor in every bite?)
But once you get past those minor hurdles, the world of soup is your oyster (ooo, that tastes good in soup too).
We about the love of stews and soups, the perfect comfort food for the winter.
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