About making soup

[japple]

I've been making soup for years and usually make it like my mother did. Start by heating a potful of chicken stock, then adding (in order) garlic, onions, celery, carrots, potatoes, turnips, cabbage. Let that cook for about 15-20 minutes, then add other stuff like leftover corn, lima beans, green beans and, if you're using tomatoes, add those. Let simmer for about 15 minutes, taste for salt, then serve. I recently noticed that a number of recipes/cookbooks call for sauteeing the onions, garlic in butter before starting the soup process, which seems redundant to me, but I tried it anyway right after Christmas. It gave the whole soup a buttery taste that I didn't care for, so today I'm going back to my traditional method.

Does anyone here saute their onions or garlic before making the soup? It seems that some of the onion/garlic flavor might be lost by doing it that way.

[Warpy]

1. I always sweat the aromatics down but I use olive oil

Oil carries flavor in the soup and flavoring it up with all those lovely sulfur compounds makes a difference in the final soup.

Still, the best tip I know for making soup is using twice as much stuff in it as you think it calls for.

[freshwest]

2. I always saute my onions and garlic in olive oil for my Pasta Fagoli.

[japple]

8. Thanks everyone for the responses. Will have to try it with olive oil.

[Warpy]

9. If you're not particularly nuts about the taste of olive oil

then any light oil like canola or safflower will do. I did for years with light oil until I actively started to love olive oil.

[japple]

12. I LOVE olive oil--could drink it straight outta the bottle!

[FarPoint]

18. I do the very same technique.

[cbayer]

3. I always sauté the onions and garlic, and often sauté the carrots, celery and peppers.

I like the buttery flavor, though, and the caramelization.

But I agree that you can conceivably do it either way.

[PoliticAverse]

4. Caramelizing the onions by sauteing them gives them a significantly different flavor.

I consider caramelized onions to be much more flavorful than those cooked by simmering in water.

You don't have to use butter, you can use whatever oil you prefer instead (in a good pan you need
very little oil).

[icymist]

5. Frankly, I see nothing wrong with your mothers' recipie...

The only difference that I would do is remove the first garlic, onions, celery, carrots, potatoes, turnips, and cabbage as they have, if you will, given up the ghost! With the resulting broth, replace fresh items of these along with your next ingredients and boil until the potatoes are soft. In this way you have made a stock and then cooked your soup within it. I do the same with making borscht, and I LOVE borscht!

[japple]

7. What do you do with the vegetables that you have removed? I always

use homemade chicken or turkey stock when making soup, and that flavors the vegetables that are used in the soup.

[icymist]

13. I discard them, send them to the compost!

All the nutrients are in the broth.

[libodem]

6. In soup

I usually start with cold tap water and add the chopped onion. In spaghetti sauce or chili I fry, the onion and garlic, in oil. And add the meat.
Caramelizing does change the whole charter.
Seems sweeter or something. My friends like them on hamburgers. Me, not so much.

[The empressof all]

10. I roast onion, parsnip, garlic and carrot with the chicken when I'm making it from scratch

I throw them in the roasting pan the last 20 minutes or so before I take the chicken out. They get brown and pick up that roasted chicken fat flavor. After I take the white meat off the chicken I throw it in the pressure cooker with the roasted veg. I also add raw garlic. celery leaves and onion skins. It makes the broth a lovely color. When broth is done I add additional veg as needed but usually cook them from raw at that point in the soup so they have some texture and add "freshness" I always add parsley too which many folks forget....

[Major Nikon]

11. Onion and garlic are going to taste different depending on how you cook them

You can saute, roast, or boil them and get different flavors from each method.

Many soup recipes boil the onion and garlic just like you describe. It all depends on what flavor you want.

[Lugnut]

14. That depends on what kind of soup I'm making.

I almost always saute onions or garlic in butter or olive oil before I start most soups. With ham based soup I always start with chopped bacon to add some good flavor.

[Glassunion]

15. I do.

On occasion I'll even roast the veggies in the oven first depending on the flavors I'm after.

Most of the time I will sweat the onions and garlic first the sauté the carrots and celery, then deglase with wine before adding the stock and meat.

[TheManInTheMac]

16. I sweat the aromatics in butter or olive oil, but it's soup. There are no rules,

only what you and your family like is what's important. But don't make shark fin soup: That's cruel.

[japple]

17. Yeah, I know it's just soup, but I wondered what I was missing by making it

the same old way all these years. And I didn't like the taste from sauteeing onions/garlic/leeks in butter, but I'll bet I will like them with olive oil. So next time I'll try it that way. Hey, we all get stuck in a rut and need to break out! That's why I started this thread. Thanks for the good advice about shark fin soup. I won't even be tempted to try it.

Edit to add:

[TheManInTheMac]

19. BTW, I think you soup sounds lovely.

I don't understand why the Chinese don't use the whole shark. Just cutting off its fins and throwing it back in the ocean is bad. It's gonna feed other fish, I know, but it's not sustainable or responsible.