Soup
1041 recipes found
Italian Wedding Soup With Turkey Meatballs
Classic Italian wedding soup is beloved for its simplicity and satisfaction. This turkey version is lean, while meatballs stay moist by simmering in broth. Start with the most flavorful broth you can get your hands on (homemade is ideal, but store-bought works well too), then pack the meatballs with flavor (garlic and parsley) and staying power (egg, panko and cheese, to gently bind them together). Traditionalists may be tempted to add a small grated onion to the meat mixture, and sweat celery and carrots into the broth, but for a quick weeknight meal, you won’t miss them here. If speed is your game, roll the mixture into 12 large meatballs—or opt for 20 smaller ones if serving kids (mini meatballs will cook through even faster). Either way, finish with a healthy dose of olive oil, lemon, cheese and dill, or any fresh Italian herb you may have on hand.
Mushroom-Barley Soup
Soup made without meat or meat broth can be insipid. That's why most people think pea soup needs ham and mushroom-barley soup needs beef. But it's possible to make a satisfying, even hearty, vegetarian soup if you choose your ingredients carefully and extract every bit of flavor from them. Enter this mushroom-barley soup, a vegetarian dish with real body, texture and depth of flavor. The key ingredient here is dried porcini, which can be reconstituted in hot water in less than 10 minutes, giving you the best-tasting mushrooms you can find outside the woods and an intensely flavored broth that rivals beef stock. Don’t forget to toast the barley while really browning the mushrooms and carrots — it lends a deep warmth.
Albóndigas de la Familia Ronstadt (Ronstadt Family Meatballs)
Fragrant with mint and cilantro and a hit of oregano, these delicate Mexican meatballs have served Linda Ronstadt’s family for generations. They were lunch for her grandfather, or a soup course when the family gathered at her grandparent’s house. The recipe, published in her memoir-cookbook hybrid “Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands” (Heyday, 2022), is different from many traditional albóndigas recipes, which use rice or soft vegetables like potatoes or carrots to bind the meatballs. It may seem like the meatball components won’t come together when kneading at first, but stick with it. The poaching liquid becomes a broth, which benefits from skimming off the little bit of foam that appears before serving. A variation of the Ronstadt family meatballs first appeared in The Times in 1989.
Beet Soup With Tarragon, Chives and Yogurt
Freshly cooked beets, though they take a while to prepare (see Tip), are so delicious that they’re worth the effort. Cook them the day before you need them and keep them in the fridge for up to a week, to use in salads or for a soup. For this borscht-inspired soup, a splash of vinegar tempers the beets’ natural sweetness, which is perfectly complemented by a splash of tart herby yogurt. The good news is this soup may be served warm or chilled; each way is refreshing.
Alice Waters’s Seasonal Minestrone
Alice Waters often recommends that cooks master a good minestrone. It’s communal and seasonal, two pillars on which she has built her cooking career. This summer recipe came from the cookbook that is her top seller: "The Art of Simple Food." It uses the best of the season’s green beans, tomatoes and squash. In the spring, fresh peas, asparagus and spinach would make a good vegetable trio, with some fennel standing in for the carrot in the sofrito. In the fall, cubes of butternut squash, a small can of tomatoes and a bunch of kale would star, with rosemary and a little chopped sage instead of thyme for seasoning. Winter might bring a soup built from turnips, potatoes and cabbage. If the turnips have greens, add them, too. Start with a large pot that has a heavy bottom. Always cook the vegetables through, about 10 minutes. They should look good enough to eat on their own. Add the beans about 10 minutes before serving. A cup or two of cooked pasta can be stirred in at the last minute. Don’t overcook the pasta. The olive oil and cheese garnish should be added once the soup is in the bowls. Ms. Waters likes to pass those at the table, once everyone is served. Pesto makes a lovely garnish, too, and gives a garlicky, herbal punch to the soup.
Tteok Mandu Guk (Rice Cake Soup With Dumplings)
You can eat a bowl of tteok guk, rice cake soup, as South Koreans do on New Year’s Day (by the Gregorian or Lunar calendar) and freeze any leftover broth for multiple soul-soothing meals in the new year. The soup sometimes includes mandu, as it does here, and those dumplings also can be frozen. An aromatic gochugaru oil turns this ordinarily snow-white dish crimson, flavoring the bold, spicy-sweet kimchi dumpling filling and tingeing the final broth with its heat. The tteok, rice cakes, here come in the form of thick, cylindrical pieces rather than soggy coins, and are added at the last moment to maintain their pleasurable chewiness.
Miso Soup
In the United States, especially in Japanese American restaurants, the standard version of miso soup usually involves little more than soft tofu, seaweed and a lily-pad suspension of scallions. Think of this recipe as your blank canvas: You could add thinly sliced shiitake mushrooms at the end, or replace the katsuobushi entirely with dried shiitakes for a vegan version. Fried tofu, clams and even chicken are all fair game when cooking miso soup at home. The chef Seiji Ando, of Benkay restaurant in Portland, Maine, adds sake and mirin for balance, and says even a tiny bit of butter can be delicious.
Menudo
Menudo is magic in a bowl — sporting tripe, a deeply spiced broth, and the choice of many different seasonings, the Mexican soup is a gift. Also known as pancita, the dish is amenable to many variations and this version from Mely Martínez’s book, “The Mexican Home Kitchen” (Rock Point, 2020), is especially soothing. Most menudo recipes follow a similar blueprint: protein (usually tripe) is simmered in broth until it reaches a silky completion. Your choice of meat sits nestled in a base which can be as spicy or soothing as your tolerance and preference allows. On the side, lime, oregano and onions are among the accoutrements to season your dish — and hominy can be a hearty addition to the bowl, complementing the textures that have been stacked atop one another.
Sopa de Fideo
Sopa de fideo is a quick and comforting Mexican staple that is particularly good on a chilly weeknight. The acidity from tomatoes, the bold garlic flavor and the luscious strands of fideo, a thin noodle similar to angel hair that’s typically included in Mexican soups, make for a hearty dish. Toppings for sopa de fideo vary, but common garnishes include avocado slices, sautéed mushrooms, lime juice, queso fresco, cooked potatoes, Mexican cream — the list goes on!
Ham and Bean Soup With Collard Greens
If you happen to have a ham bone leftover from a roasted ham, cover it with water and simmer it with an onion and a bay leaf to make the stock for this rich, meaty soup. But if not, chicken stock works well, too.
Eventide Fish Chowder
Clam chowder is the New England classic everyone knows, but fish chowder is also popular — and a lot easier to make. This recipe comes from Eventide, in Portland, Maine, a combination of a seafood shack, an oyster bar and a modern farm-to-table restaurant with Japanese influences. Dashi, the Japanese fish stock, has an oceanic taste that is perfect here, and the instant kind is easy to buy online and keep on hand.
Pasta e Fagioli
This is a classic Italian bean and pasta soup. If you have already made a pot of beans using a pound of beans, and want to use it for this soup, just use half the beans but all of the broth as directed in Step 1.
Vegan Broccoli Soup With Cashew Cream
This nourishing, three-vegetable soup is thick and creamy, even without dairy. It takes very little skill and only 25 minutes to make, but success lies in proper blending: Use a high-powered blender for the creamiest soup, or let it go a few minutes longer in a standard blender. Fennel and celery provide welcome depth, and the quick cashew cream feels luxurious spooned over the top or stirred right in. Save any extra to drizzle on other blended soups or even roasted vegetables. Finish this vibrant bowl with celery leaves, parsley or dill, and two basic but crucial ingredients: an extra drizzle of olive oil and a dusting of freshly ground pepper.
Slow-Cooker Cauliflower, Potato and White Bean Soup
This creamy vegetarian soup is built on humble winter staples, but the addition of sour cream and chives make it feel special. (Crumble a few sour-cream-and-onion chips on top to take the theme all of the way.) It takes just a few minutes to throw the ingredients into the slow cooker, and the rest of the recipe almost entirely hands-off, making it very doable on a weekday. Use an immersion blender, if you have one, to purée it to a silky smooth consistency, but a potato masher works well for a textured, chunky soup. To get vegetarian recipes like this one delivered to your inbox, sign up for The Veggie newsletter.
Miso Fish Chowder
This twist on New England clam chowder features a lighter broth that gets its depth from caramelized miso and smoky bacon, and its briny seafood flavor from bottled clam juice. New potatoes are in season during summer months and have tender, thin skins, but peeled Yukon Golds are a great alternative. To ensure flaky, tender fish, it is gently poached in the broth during the last five minutes of cooking. For a meatless chowder, simply omit the bacon and add a few pinches of smoked paprika in its place.
Pumpkin Corn Soup With Ginger Lime Cream
Broccoli and Cheddar Soup
A staple of any fast-casual restaurant, broccoli-cheddar soup has somewhat of a cult following on the internet. Thicker than cream of broccoli, this roux-thickened soup can be puréed completely smooth or left chunky and rustic. Either way, be sure to use the sharpest Cheddar available (white or orange work here). It’ll provide richness in addition to a necessary acidity.
Vegan Matzo Ball Soup
The actress Natalie Portman was seeking a good vegan matzo ball soup, and the result is this recipe: soft matzo balls that hold together thanks to a little help from chickpeas. Matzo meal, potato starch, a little olive oil and lots of ginger, dill and cilantro lend plenty of flavor, while chickpea water (known as aquafaba) provides binding that would otherwise come from eggs. You can use the liquid from canned chickpeas, but the liquid from dry chickpeas soaked, then cooked in water works best. Ginger and nutmeg are characteristics of German-Jewish matzo balls, while the Yemenite addition of cilantro and dill adds even more brightness and flavor. Natalie is right: “It’s a very sad world without good matzo balls.”
Birria Ramen
The leftover birria broth, or consomé, from a pot of birria is delicious and versatile, and can be repurposed in the kitchen in a number of ways. Use it like stock, to cook beans, and infuse them with all the flavors of the birria, or stretch it into another meal by dropping in some matzo balls to poach. If you’ve only got a little left, you can make a quick, comforting noodle dish, garnished with fresh herbs and a little onion. This recipe works well with instant ramen noodles, pulled from a package, though fresh noodles are great, too.
Pasta and Bean Soup
The chef Tom Valenti channels his late grandmother in his cooking, utilizing her ''stove top approach to life'' by braising and stewing and slow cooking the kinds of food that snowstorms were made for. Her pasta and bean soup, a treat for carb-lovers with its addition of mashed potatoes to thicken the broth, was one of many old-country comfort foods that she fed Mr. Valenti during his childhood.
Potato and White Bean Puttanesca Soup
Potatoes and cannellini beans provide the bulk in this hearty soup inspired by pasta puttanesca, while the garlicky tomato base is imbued with the briny punch of capers and black olives. The signature of puttanesca is heat, so adjust the amount of red-pepper flakes to your liking or use fresh chiles, if you have them. Reserve some of the olives and capers, and combine with parsley to make a topper that amplifies the sharp, bright flavors. Haphazardly mashing some of the beans and potatoes is an efficient way to thicken the soup, without the need for any additional equipment. In fact, it’s a great trick to have up your sleeve whenever you are looking to thicken soups or stews.
Cream of Spinach Soup
Puréed vegetable soups can be lean and spare or rich and creamy, spicy or subtle, hot or cold. They can be vegetarian or quite meaty. And much of the cooking time is just for simmering. This spinach soup, with a touch of nutmeg and some cream, is a classic combination, and its flavor justifies that distinction.
Creamy Cauliflower Soup With Rosemary Olive Oil
This soup turns a short list of vegan ingredients into a sublimely silky soup. Infusing olive oil with fresh rosemary is a trick you’ll want to keep up your sleeve: The results are delicious brushed on roast chicken, drizzled over roasted winter vegetables or even just sopped up with a nice piece of bread. The croutons here are optional, but they transform an elegant and delicate first-course soup into a satisfying lunch.
Thai-Inspired Chicken Meatball Soup
This stellar soup is reviving and cozy, made in one pot, and ready in 30 minutes. It starts with ginger-scented chicken-cilantro meatballs that are browned, then simmered in a fragrant coconut milk broth that’s inspired by tom kha gai, a Thai chicken-coconut soup seasoned with lemongrass, galangal, makrut lime leaves and chile. A heap of spinach is added for color and flavor, and a squeeze of lime adds brightness and punch. The soup is brothy, so serve it over rice or another grain to make it a full meal.