Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Soup is EASY!

If you can make stock, you can make soup.  The very best way to make stock is to follow my friend Faith's blog at this link  http://tryandlike.blogspot.com/2011/06/homemade-stock.html .  After you have mastered the art of making stock the right way, you can EASILY make any soup of your choosing.  You just need to... well... have some patience.

Today, I got home and took out 2 quarts of home-made stock and poured them into a pot.  This is the stock I made after I made the whole chicken on Sunday.  I simply took everything that was chicken related that could not be eaten by me and put it in the pot with water.  I then simmered the carcass and all the parts in this water for a few hours, then strained it into another pot and stored it in the refrigerator. I had one extra quart which I froze.

I put the 2 quarts of stock in the pot and chopped up some celery, carrots, onions, and minced some garlic and dropped it in the pot.  I also, just for fun, put a cup of black-eyed-peas in the mix along with a pre-apportioned pile of chopped up chicken (from the chick on Sunday).  I then put some salt, pepper and basil into the pot and let it simmer for about 2 hours.

That's soup.

Just take what you have and put it in some water or stock, then season it and let it simmer over time.

If you are anything like me, you get overwhelmed by the list of instructions recipes provide.  Soup should be the complete opposite.  Why?  Well, think about the origins of soup and stew.  Basically, take whatever might rot in the next couple of days, chop it up and cook it.  Blamo!  Soup.  You season to your taste.  My taste might be completely different, but soup is entirely up to you and your taste.

If you are anything like me, you thought for the longest time that soup was something you either buy in cans, a box, or at a restaurant.  It was too hard for you to make.  Well, as I've learned over the last few years, soup is very easy to make, just take what you've got, put it all together and simmer over time.  Season to your taste and you might actually find that making soup is extremely easy, tasty, and significantly more healthy than buying it in a can-- no matter how clever the commercials!

Just treat bullion cubes as the devil and you will be A-O-K!

Enjoy your 40 day fast!  I hope this helps in some meal choices... one more thing, if you are ever in a restaurant and they have soup as a  special, ask, what is the base of the soup?  If bullion is the  answer, RUN!  If stock is the answer, order it.  If I don't know is the answer... order something else.

Thanks for reading and God be with you!

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