Campbell’s Tomato is good, particularly if prepared with skim milk. It isn’t impossible to do tomato soup wrong, though; I’ve had some store brands that tasted like a warmed can of V8 – just a few water molecules away from a salt lick.
[quote=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consomme]
This is Consomme. In its most basic form, it’s a thickened beef or poultry broth with a bit of tomato.
Some bacteria can survive the cooking process if it isn’t cooked hot enough and/or or long enough. Furthermore, anaerobic (or aerotolerant) bacterial strains don’t need oxygen to thrive, thus simply cooking and canning are still no guarantee that your end product will last or even be safe. Salt is therefore used both for its flavour-enhancing properties, and because of its antibacterial properties – it draws moisture from their cells via osmosis. This won’t necessarily kill all bacteria in the food, but it does significantly reduce their ability to reproduce.
[quote=Common TaterMindfield - making stew is easy. Start with a Beef Stew recipe, or several even - adding ingredients you like to taste. After a while you’ll be a pro.[/QUOTE]
My problem the first time I tried making it was working out how to properly thicken it. The important lesson learned was that starch was not, in fact, the correct way to achieve that end – unless you were aiming for a thin, jelly-like consistency.
Apparently, there must be something wrong with me. One of my favorite things in the world is Campbell’s chicken noodle soup - made with no more than 1/4 of the water it calls for.
Has anyone tried Wolfgang Puck’s canned soups? I particularly like his chicken and egg noodle soup. It’s not condensed, so all I need to do is empty a can into a bowl and microwave it for three minutes.
I had a professor many years ago who filled a shelf in his nookcase with empty boxes of Lipton Cup-a-Soup he’d consumed. it ended very abruptly, because he found out that it had an obscene amount of salt in it. More than Campbell’s. So did heir regular packaged soups.
That was ages ago. I assume they’ve reformulated in these health-conscious times.
Actually, I’d prefer Progresso Turkey or Chicken Noodle soup. Or the veggie beef. However, this is REALLY an area where YMMV, as different people like different comfort food.
The secret is to simmer for many hours, basically. This is off the top of my head, I don’t really have a recipe, I just make it, so quantities are approx.
1 to 2lbs stew meat
4 to 5 large potatos, washed, pared, chopped.
3 large onions, chopped
2 to 3 carrots, chopped
1 cup frozen peas
2 bay leaves
2 cloves garlic
3 tbsp worcestershire
3 tbsp brown sugar
3 tbsp lemon juice
1 qt strong coffee
1 bottle beer
1 qt V8 or tomato
1 t. thyme
1 clove
1 t. crushed anise seed
salt & pepper to taste
Drench the stew meat well in flour and brown thoroughly in oil or butter along with a chopped onion, garlic, pepper, anise seed and a nice helping of bourbon or wine. Drink some too, if you like. Dump everything into a nice big stew pot and bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat and simmer on low (bubbles just breaking the surface) for about 4 hours or so.
Depending on how much liquid you add, you’ll end up with soup, or stew. I prefer stew, so it starts out with a bit less liquid. As the potatos cook, they will start to “starch” up the gruel and thicken. You can add a paste of cornstarch or flour to help thicken, but I never bother. Serve with saltines, butter, and a big glass of cold milk.
The only soup I buy in a can is the cream of Mushroom/whatever family. For mixes.
I’d rather make my own. I can’t take all the sodium.
I’d like to add this with a follow up question or two, I had a sudden urge for Pea Soup not long ago and the craving was quite intense. I hadn’t had Pea Soup since my mom made a vat of it for me 16 years earlier for when I had my wisdom teeth removed. I ate so much of it I was all Pea Soup’d out. Having no inkling on how to make it, I thought, perchance, to satisfy the desire by finding a can of Pea Soup somewhere and dilute a bit with milk or water.
There is none to be had ( at least at the MegaMart where I work PT.) or the other local IGA.
Why is this? Is pea soup the red headed stepchild of the soup industry?
( I have since learned to make my own Pea Soup - from The Joy of Cooking - and I ate the entire batch myself in two days. Then I made another batch and my husband got a serving of it. It was delicious.
Dunno about where you are but it’s available here in Canada, though the quality varies widely with brand. I prefer Habitant, which is a nice creamy pea soup. They’ve watered it down over the years – it used to be quite thick – but it’s still quite nice. Campbell’s make a pea soup, but it’s very thin, more like a broth with split green peas in it.
This sounds like an … odd … recipe – specifically, the coffee and beer. Unless these are meant to be drunk during preparation. The rest sounds good though, I’ll have to try that.
That’s an interesting point - because Lipton Instant Soup is singularly useless if you try to make soup, so far as I know. But if you mix a packet w/ sour cream it makes a very fine chip dip…
Actually, in a sense, that is exactly what you are eating with today’s Campbell’s canned chicken noodle soup.
When I was a kid I use to imagine that they had giant vats of soup, slow-simmering for hours to produce a wondrous concoction I could never replicate at home. (I grew up in a brothless household, and only discovered the virtues of homemade chicken broth after reading some double blind clinical studies on its benefits in inflammatory joint conditions)
But I’ve seen the machine they use today. It’s not even a cooking device. It’s a canning machine. They dispense the dry ingredients in an empty can, add water, and what passes for cooking occurs during the 20 minutes in ahot water bath to sterilize the contents for shelf life. Other effects occur during the long storage in warehouses and shipping, such as the barley-starch thickening of my childhood favorite “Beef with vegetables” (which had to be renamed after the 70s Truth in Labeling Law to “Vegetable beef” – until realized they could re-qualify as “beef soup” by reducing the vegetable ingredients. I believe both types are sold now)
Since I discovered the benefits (for me – YMMV) I quit eating canned soup altogether (except one brand of clam chowder), and I have a shelf of cans that were unsuitable for use as ingredients in other dishes that are testing the limits of shelf life (Where can I find a can drive for the needy? They may be old, but not yet so old that I’d hesitate to eat them myself if circumstances required) I could really use that extra shelf back!
I feel a bittersweet pang for that child of the 1960s who thought factories were scientific miracles that produced foods we could never equal at home. Though some do indeed have some nifty cleverness, it’s mostly in the ingredients or snack food industries: only a large sales volume can justify the R&D of high tech wizardry, . Most food factories I’ve seen are remarkably mundane. I was surprised how many “national brand names” only turn out 10K -100K cases a year of a given variety (about 0.5- 5.5 cases per state per day), and are only produced part time on demand. I have an image in my mind of a tote board at Pace HQ that lights up whenever some stocker in Fargo ND opens a case of Lime and Garlic salsa.
If you’re looking to expand past Campbell’s, consider store brands. A local grocery store chain used to have the best faux-premium soups! They were discontinued, and I miss them. Right now, though, I’m in love with the Target house brand soups. The vegetable soup is great - not many calories, and it’s not condensed (but served in an extra-big can). I typically will just eat a whole can for dinner. It’s not as mushy as Campbell’s soups are. They have other varieties also. I hear the Corn Chowder is a winner, but I haven’t tried it (not vegetarian).
I buy at least three or four cans every time I shop at Target. It’s also cheap, so I haven’t moved into the Wolfgang Puck soups yet.
Years ago, Campbells had the most fantastic frozen soups-they were things like lobster bisque, shrip bisque, oyster chowder, etc. they were in cans 9in the frozen food section0. You diliuted them 50/50 with milk-man they were great!
i haven’t seen them for years!
The rest sounds good though, I’ll have to try that.