Soups
from Italian Traditional Food

All about soups

Many cooks fight shy of making their own soups because they feel this will be expensive and time-consuming. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

About soups

Soups are a good standby for everyday meals and are very economical to make because they can usually be varied to include whatever ingredients you have in the house, from the stock in which meat or chicken has been cooked to leftovers from vegetables or fish dishes.

Canned or packet soups are extravagant and best kept for an emergency, or when cooking for one person. Cooking times for broths are quite lengthy but the soup can look after itself, so leaving you free to do other things. Puree and cream soups are cooked quite quickly to retain their flavour. Make fairly large quantities of soup and store in a refrigerator (but without adding cream) for reheating as needed. A thick broth followed by bread and cheese makes a good meal in itself, whereas puree or cream soups, being lighter and more delicate in flavour, are best as a first course, especially in the evening.

Broths

These are thick, filling soups, made from meat or vegetables, and need long simmering on gentle heat to extract the maximum flavour from ingredients.

Cream soups

These are made mostly from green vegetables, cooked in milk and thickened with egg yolk and cream.

Sieving or blending gives them a smooth consistency. For a really excellent cream soup, use chicken or veal stock because the liquid together with egg and cream liaison gives a special smooth consistency; this type of soup is called veloute.

Puree soups

These have a farinaceous or root vegetable, or solid meat, such as game, base. After cooking they are sieved or mixed in an electric blender.

Puree and cream soups have a fairly short cooking time - between 20 and 40 minutes. Once cooked the soup should be pureed or sieved. Prolonged cooking ruins the flavour and may well spoil the consistency.

Dried vegetables, in the same was as vegetables used in broths, need long, slow cooking to make them really soft and almost falling apart before they are sieved or blended.

Blenders and sieves

A blender is invaluable if you wish to make velvety, well-flavoured soups out of unpromising material, such as leftovers from vegetables or fish dishes.

To make a puree use a Mouli sieve for soups that should be sieved rather than blended. First set the Mouli sieve over the bowl and pour the liquid through. Then tip in the food to be sieved a half at a time. Work the handle until it is all through before adding the second portion. It is most important that every bit goes through the sieve, otherwise the soup will lack flavour and will be too thin.

If sieving a thick soup, eg. bean or potato, sieve it into a fresh bowl and then dilute it gradually with the liquid to avoid lumps. If you haven't a Mouli sieve, rub through a sieve over a bowl as above.

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