It's 5F outside. Please share your best stew and soup recipes

Cafe Society
41

Being a Yankee…

Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

2 ¾ cups dried split peas (more than a single bag)
2 quarts cold water
1 1/2 pounds ham bone or 8-12 oz. ham steak (cubed)
½ cup crumbled bacon (cooked)
2 onions, very thinly sliced and chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 pinches dried marjoram
3 stalks celery, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
2 potatoes, diced

Directions

In a large stock pot, cover peas with 2 quarts cold water and soak overnight (preferred). If you need a faster method, simmer the peas gently for 2 minutes, and then soak for l hour.

Once peas are soaked, add ham bone, onion, salt, pepper and marjoram. Cover, bring to boil and then simmer for 1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally.

Remove bone; cut off meat, dice and return meat to soup. Add bacon, celery, carrots and potatoes. Cook slowly, uncovered for 30 to 40 minutes, or until vegetables are tender. (Takes about 3-1/2 hours on high in Crock Pot for peas to disintegrate properly.)

If you increase this recipe, it won’t fit in a 5-quart Crock Pot.

42

When it’s cold outside, nothing warms me like a big mug of hot and sour soup. And it’s so easy to make!

1 large egg white
1 large egg
2 TB cornstarch
2 TB reduced sodium soy sauce, or more, to taste
2 TB sherry
1 tsp sugar
12 oz Shiitaki mushrooms, or any mixed, sliced – but Shiitakis are very nice.
8 oz firm tofu, cut in small cubes
2 TB toasted sesame oil, or to taste
6 cups reduced sodium chicken broth
4-5 TB rice vinegar, to taste
1 8 oz. can bamboo shoots, drained
1 cup bean sprouts
1 bunch spring onions, chopped and divided
1/2 tsp hot pepper flakes or more, to taste

Combine egg and egg white and beat lightly. Set aside.

Mix together cornstarch, soy sauce, sherry and sugar in a small bowl. Set aside.

Saute sliced mushrooms and tofu in toasted sesame oil in a 4-quart pot (or bigger) until they release their juices and are slightly browned.

Add chicken broth, rice vinegar and bamboo shoots. Simmer gently for about 15 minutes to blend flavors.

Return soup to a boil. SLOWLY drizzle the egg mixture into the soup while stirring in a circular motion. Simmer one minute. Add green onions, hot pepper flakes and bean sprouts, then blend in cornstarch/soy sauce mixture. Stir until soup is slightly thickened. Serve with some additional sliced green onions on top.

To make it heartier, you can add chopped or slivered cooked meat of your choice. Chicken, pork and beef are all great. I’d avoid seafood, though.

43

A lot of restaurants make hot and sour soup with peppercorns, not capsaicin. I know this because i have a strong aversion to capsaicin, but can often enjoy hot and sour soup. (also, I’ve seen recipes.)

44

The heat is supposed to come from white peppercorns in hot and sour soup, but many also use red peppers for heat. When I make it at home, it’s purely white pepper for the heat, and it tastes fantastic and plenty spicy.

45

Isn’t that the beauty of recipes? We can adjust them to our personal tastes. :slight_smile:

46

New Year’s Day black eyed peas: one big onion, roughly chunked; two stalks of celery, chunked or broken up; Christmas ham bone; fresh or frozen or soaked dried black eyed peas; enough water to cover; plenty of black pepper. Sometimes I add a can of diced tomatoes and the juice. Put all this in a Crock pot on low and let cook for several hours. When the peas are cooked to your liking, remove the ham bone, let it cool until you can handle it, slice off any meat and return the meat to the pot. Salt to taste or add some chicken bouillon powder for the salt, tomato or chicken and tomato bouillon is good, too. Let it cook a little bit longer.

47

Nah. Ham hocks and black-eyed peas have black-eyed peas and a ham hock. OK, some water and a couple of bay leaves.

I pull the hocks out after about six hours and remove the bones and skin, cut up the meat, and put the meat back in.

48

When chicken leg quarters in the ten-pound bag are on sale, I skin and de-bone the thighs and freeze them. The legs get skinned and then boiled and I freeze the cooked meat. All the back pieces, bones, and skin go in a pressure cooker with a couple quarts of water and cooked for an hour, yielding yummy broth to be used in the following soup:

Chicken veggie soup:
Chicken broth
Two chicken thighs, diced (easy to do by defrosting frozen ones partially in the microwave, then dicing)
Parsnips (2-3), sliced
Carrots (2-3), sliced
Rutabaga (at least a cup and a half, 1/2" cubes)
Turnips (root, 1 1/2 cups, 1/2" cubes)
Frozen or canned sweet corn (one cup)
Green beans, frozen or canned or fresh (one cup)
one chopped onion
A handful of barley
Bring to a boil and then simmer for at least a half hour.

Use as much broth plus water to make the soup to your preferred soupiness. I use salt, pepper, onion powder, and basil for seasoning. I find the rutabaga makes a good potato substitute that doesn’t get mushy, and the parsnips add a nice aroma. The barley thickens the soup a bit and reminds me of eating Campbell’s soup when I was a kid.

49

It is the reason, indeed, I cook and eat 90% at home. :slight_smile: Lots of places just don’t make the stuff I do, anyway (like no Hungarian restaurants in the Chicago area anymore) and those that do, do it wrong. :wink: (Actually, those Hungarian restaurants that were around were pretty damned on the mark, but the other Central European restaurants don’t quite do it the way I like it. Yes, the have their own takes on Hungarian food. Such was true in the neighboring countries out in Europe. But when I eat Hungarian, I want to be transported back to my home away from home.)

50

I had some more of that goulash (‘goulash soup’, since it has potatoes and carrots?) the other night. Seems to have gotten more tender sitting in the fridge. :slight_smile:

51

I don’t know if it’s Authentic Hungarian beef stew, but I’ve made this pörkölt recipe a couple of times and it was excellent (added some of my own herbs as well as okra).

52

It will. I forget the reason — I swear it was on Good Eats, but stewed/braised meat that has been refrigerated and reheated does have a better texture. I’m not sure if he said specifically more tender, but he did mention it. Also, there’s flavor development from sitting around another day. Goulash soup tastes great the first day, but it’s even better the second, like a lot of dishes of this type.

53

That looks absolutely correct for style. Mind you, I am not Hungarian – my family is Polish – I just spend five plus years doing a deep dive into their food when I lived there and since then and had plenty of both homemade and restaurant made dishes (and, I must say, for Hungarian dishes, I almost always preferred the home versions.)

I cook Hungarian based on ratios, mainly. For pörkölt, about 3:1 to 2:1 by weight meat:onion. Some brown the meat, some don’t. I only use up to about a level tablespoon paprika per pound of meat, sometimes more like 2 teaspoons. Her recipe is much heavier, but those ranges vary. I also like bigger chunks of beef than her, but 1/2 inch cubes is pretty normal, too. I always use purely sweet paprika and add heat at the table. You can, of course, go half-sharp or half-and-half sweet and hot. The hardest part in the US is finding a solid Hungarian Paprika. Spice House sells good paprika, but my favorite that I just discovered is from Burlap and Barrel, the noble paprika from Kalocsa. Their stuff is legit. Smells of fresh red pepper essence – exactly what you want in a paprika. Penzey’s now sells “Hungarian-style paprika” which I could swear used to be sourced from Hungary that is good enough, but it’s still lacking, IMHO.

Her points on how to add the paprika are crucial and spot-on. You want to incorporate the paprika into the oil (lard is most traditional and what I try to use; sunflower oil would be also popular in Hungary) before adding liquid to basically bloom it and infuse the oil with paprika. But you don’t want it to burn. So I always take the pan off the heat. I do the order of ingredients differently than she does, but it’s not really that different. Hers is correct, too. My only quibble is that I would add less water than she does. She says to cover the meat – I only add enough to make sure nothing burns - 1/2 - 2/3 cup for 2 pounds of meat and a pound of onions; just a bit more than covered the bottom of the pan. The onions and meat release a LOT of liquid, and this gets you a bit more concentrated flavor (though I suppose you can always cook it down in the end, if you’d like.)

It’s a very, very simple stew, as your recipe shows. Typically caraway seed is the only other spice (optionally) added, though I always add it. (You can also try marjoram without falling astray of Hungarian flavors, but I tend to find that more in Austrian and German versions of the dish. I don’t ever remember being served a pörkölt in Hungary with more than paprika and caraway [and S&P]) The beauty of this dish is pairing it up with some homemade galuska/nokedli, which some folks may be familiar with if they’ve had the tear-drop style of spaetzle at a German restaurant.

54

I’ve posted this before. Rather than a soup or stew, it’s a sauce that goes particularly well with chicken (stewed pieces or even meatballs made with ground chicken). The ingredients aren’t exotic or unhealthy, but the sum of the parts is a calorie bomb that I eat only during the coldest months of the year. It’ll take about an hour of your time and some concentration.

For two or three hearty servings:

  • One raw chicken in pieces (remove skin)
  • Mushrooms (optional)
  • Two eggs
  • 20–25 raw almonds
  • A generous pinch of saffron
  • Olive oil
  • Three slices of white bread (remove crust)
  • An onion
  • Chicken bouillon (optional)
  • White wine
  • Parsley (optional)

Make two hard-boiled eggs, peel and set aside. While they’re cooking, in a small frying pan without oil, toast separately raw almonds and saffron over a low flame, setting aside each on a plate when done. Toast them separately, being very careful not to burn them, especially the saffron, and don’t forget about the eggs you’re boiling. In the same small frying pan, add a tablespoon or two of olive oil, fry the bread until golden on both sides (careful not to burn) and set aside with the almonds and saffron. These ingredients will make the sauce.

In a big frying pan (with lid is better but not necessary), brown chicken pieces in olive oil and set them aside on another plate. In the same oil, sauté chopped onion, add mushrooms cut into pieces, cover with lid and continue cooking until the mushrooms have released their liquid and are starting to brown. Add a little white wine and stir.

Using a stick blender or mortar and pestle, grind up the fried bread, almonds, saffron and the yolks of the boiled eggs with a little water (broth is better but not necessary) to make a thick sauce, and add it to the big frying pan. Stir and add a little water if the sauce is too thick, add chicken bouillon if you like, add the browned chicken and stir to cover all the pieces with the sauce. Cook for 10 to 15 minutes, checking every so often to make sure it’s not sticking to the bottom of the pan, and flip the chicken pieces at the midway point. Chop parsley and the whites of the boiled eggs and sprinkle over each serving.

Notes: The sauce should be thick, so be mindful when adding water. “Chicken in pieces” means cutting thighs and drumsticks in halves and breasts in thirds. Any crustless, white bread will work, even Wonder. Day-old French/Italian bread is best. The three slices I’ve indicated would apply to a whole chicken and a big loaf of bread, so fry five or six slices if using French/Italian bread (smaller diameter). Goes well with rice or fried potatoes.

55

I made this for dinner last night. Really good! I would advise, if anyone else makes it, to use the dry roasted peanuts as the recipe calls for instead of substituting peanut butter, because running the peanuts through the food processor with the other soup base ingredients gave the soup a pleasant grainy texture that was very similar to lentil soup. In fact, if someone had made it for me and told me it was red lentil soup I might have believed them. At least use chunky if you do go with peanut butter :slightly_smiling_face:

I wonder if there’s something about peanuts that masks capsaicin-- I added 4 large dried red chili peppers in the blender with the soup base and the soup didn’t taste spicy at all. I ended up adding like a heaping tablespoon of cayenne pepper and and a goodly amount of ghost pepper sauce just to get it up to a ‘normal’ level of spiciness. And I like spice, but I’m not a Scoville sadomasochist.

56

I’m glad you liked it! :slight_smile:

57

I made a ham and corn chowder with leftover Christmas ham recently.

Ingredients include bite-sized ham, creamed corn, diced potatoes, celery*, onions*, carrots*, fresh parsley, a small jar of pimentos, and chicken broth, with crispy bacon* on top.

Sauté the ingredients* in the bacon fat, add flour to make a roux, then add the rest of the ingredients and broth.

Sorry - this is just off the top of my head. The finished product looks like confetti!

58

Just remembered this post, because I just made dumplings for left-over turkey stew and they’re cooking now.

Here’s the recipe I inherited from my mother; dead easy and usually works well. The only drawback is that if there’s leftovers, the dumplings tend to suck up all the stew juices by the next day, so I tend to make a thin stew for more liquid.

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 c margarine, lard or shortening
1 c milk

Prep

  1. Make your stew first. You want it to be bubbling.

  2. Mix the dry ingredients well in a mixing bowl.

  3. Add shortening and mix thorougly; use a pastry blender “if one has one” as my mother send to me as I went off to uni;

  4. When well-mixed, add the milk and stir, until all the dry ingredients are wettened; should be sticky, not dry.

Cooking

  1. Using spoon or fingers (depending how sticky/wet the dough is), drop balls or spoonfuls onto the top of the bubbling stew.

  2. Let it simmer for 10 minutes, uncovered.

  3. Put cover on and let cook another 10 minutes.

  4. Uncover and eat.

59

All these yummy recipes remind me that nothing goes with stew or soup like a wedge of homemade bread.

My favorite recipe is Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, from the similarly-titled cookbook by Zoe Francois and Jeff Hertzberg. If you google for it, you’ll find it and similar recipes. (I’d feel bad about doing this, but the recipe I downloaded had comments by Zoe Francois, so I figured it was okay.)

I liked the recipe so much I bought the authors’ healthy bread version, which focuses on whole grain breads. The ones I’ve made from the book are excellent.

60

Tonight’s dinner.

I’ve made this a few times and it’s great. It’s got that beefy stew with crusty bread feel to it, which I think is the idea.

If you are new to vegan cooking, this is not a bad place to start. The ingredients and tastes are very familiar to a meat-eating palette.