Making a Great Soup

Soup is a great and easy way to make a nutritious meal for your family. It tends to be best on a cool fall day, or a cold winter day, but would not be out of place in the spring or summer. Soup making can be fun, and allow you to get creative with the food you will be serving your family. Below are some steps to doing just that.

To start off a good soup, you should have some lean beef, mutton, chicken, pork or veal available. These give the soup some body, and allow it to be more filling and better suited for an actual meal on its own, instead of as a side dish. When shopping for the meat to go in your soup, try to find meats that are fresher as they will add more nutrition to your meal. Also, try to stay away from fatty meats because they do not do well in a soup environment.

The next step to great soup making is to find several ingredients that add flavor, and go well with your choice of meat. The best bet is often times vegetables. Fresh, nutritious veggies will add a nice, colorful touch to your soup. At your local grocery store, check each vegetable that you would like to buy before purchasing it. Make sure that it looks, smells, and feels good. Rotten or overripe vegetables will only ruin your soup, not help it. A tip for adding vegetables to your soup is to cut them up into very small pieces. Making the vegetables smaller then your meat is ideal, so that you can enjoy a piece of meat, and small vegetable at the same time. The best vegetables for soup making are carrots, celery, red green and yellow peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, and green beans. If vegetables are not something you and your family would enjoy, you can also look into beans or pasta instead. It really is all based on personal preference.

After you have added all of your meat and vegetables, it is time to season your soup to perfection. Adding seasonings like garlic, clover, basil, oregano, salt, pepper, onion powder, cumin, and lemon can add a special touch to your soup making. You can add the flavors that you and your family will enjoy. By experimenting with different flavorings you can create a new family favorite. However, you need to remember that in soup making one of the easiest mistakes to make is over seasoning. You need to be sure that no one flavor is too predominating over everything else.

Once you add all of your ingredients you may want to thicken your soup, to make it more like a stew, or just add a little volume to it. In most instances you would add about a quart of water for every pound of meat and other ingredients that you add. If you want a thicker soup, try adding less water. For stews, you may want to only use a half a quart of water. If that does not make it as thick as you would like, you can add some flour or cornstarch to your soup as well.

As you can see, creating the perfect soup is not a difficult task. You are urged to not follow a direct recipe, and add some of your own ingredients to the soup, in order to make it more enjoyable for you and you family. The three basic ingredients in a soup, meat, vegetables, and spices, must all be chosen by personal preference. Be sure to buy good quality foods for the best soup. So put away that cook book, and get started on your soup today!