a Very Good Soup

Note: since originally writing the below blurb, I have made an additional round of soup. And it was arguably a Very Good *Better Soup. I have (nonsensically) provided the changes I made and how I believe they improved my first iteration.

this picture has nothing to do with anything you’re going to read below, but it does highlight what many would consider the original Very Good Soup. and I think all articles need pictures and I didn’t take one of the soup, so here is the compromise.

I made a really good soup tonight, and I would be remiss to not share.

The original recipe was from Bon Appetit for a Lemony White Bean Soup, but the overwhelming feedback from those who had made it said it was a bit bland, so I spiced it up a bit.

The first step of the recipe calls for you to add your vegetables to a food processor and pulse until they are “finely chopped”. A fun fact about me is that I do not own a food processor (perfect gift for this upcoming Aries season, wink wink!) however I do own the worst blender known to mankind, so I decided to use that.

I was making a huge Dutch oven full of soup, so I started with a full onion cut up into rough chunks, a few stalks of celery, and approximately 10 garlic cloves (I love garlic. It is literally tattooed on my body I love garlic so much) and put in aforementioned shitty blender.

As I am trying to push the vegetables down, which have quickly become basically liquified, I manage to completely crack and splinter the wood spoon I’m cooking with. Awesome.

I persist. If you’re my friend and you ate this soup, don’t fear. I meticulously, for many minutes while tears ran down my face due to the garlic onion puree I had created, picked out wood shards to avoid any internal splinters.

Anyways, moving on. From there I peeled and sliced up two big carrots into small diced cubes. When I made it for the second time, I still blended the onion and garlic (no wood shards that time!) but I chose to chop the celery and add in with the carrot for a bit more texture.

After all the vegetables had been handled, I began the process of rehydrating Canelli beans, something I had no experience with. The recipe only called for 8 ounces of beans, but I bought a 16 ounce bag and I love beans so I added them all to a bowl and added hot water. Our sink gets freakishly hot so it was near boiling which helped them hydrate faster and I also realized that they would cook further in the soup, so I wasn’t too concerned about them not being entirely hydrated. It ended up working in my favor and the beans still had a firm, but cooked through texture after the hour and a half of simmering.

Now that everything was prepped, it was time to start cooking! I added 3 tbsp of butter and a splash of olive oil to the Dutch oven, then added the onion, celery and garlic mush and the cubes carrots. I also zested two lemons directly into the pot.

I let the mixture cook for about 10 minutes, added salt and pepper, then drained and added the beans which were still quite firm. From there, I added 2 whole containers of chicken stock because I knew some of the broth would be absorbed in the process of the beans cooking. I salted and peppered again then brought to a boil for roughly an hour and a half where I periodically checked the bean consistency to make sure they were cooking.

I cleaned out my fridge while it was cooking and discovered leftover cooked chicken thighs and kale about to go bad so decided to add those after the 1.5 hour cook time and I am SO glad I did - much richer flavor. I continued to salt, pepper and added the juice of two lemons at the very end.

While I was happy with my Very Good Soup, I also knew I could do better in a second iteration. So between this one and my second iteration, I chopped the celery instead, used less beans for a more brothy soup and added a secret ingredient.

Here is where I prove to you my Food Studies Master title and provide you with a Master hack: first and foremost, if you plan to use grated cheese in any recipe, buy full blocks and grate your own cheese! Pre shredded cheese has many random ingredients added to better preserve it, so grating it yourself allows you to skip those random add ons and it generally tastes more fresh AND when you finish said cheese, you are left with a Parmesan rind that can be put in your freezer and used as a flavor adder tool in soups and sauces. In the second iteration of this soup, I used frozen Parmesan rinds I had stored to add a cheesier depth of flavor, and I highly endorse this step! Plus, if you’re paying for a fresh chunk of Parmesan, you may as well use every last morsel of it! I added the rind to the broth as it simmered, then pulled the (now melted) rind out and disposed of it prior to serving.

I’ve realized that while this newsletter did not make you any concrete promises of what it would be, I am giving you recipes in a very conversational way that I hope allows you the ability to follow and recreate if you so please! But! Good news! School starts again this Tuesday and one of my courses this semester is a Food Writing course, so hopefully you see some generally “better” writing these next few months (whatever that means). I am also taking Food and Culture and deciding on my third class, so new things to come, new topics to ramble on!

Happy soup season to all who celebrate! May your soup and fingers stay warm this chilly season.

Talk soon,

xo Frank