A few weeks ago I added a new tool to my kitchen…a ten quart pressure cooker. I had never cooked with a pressure cooker so I have been having a grand old time cooking potatoes and cheap pieces of meat in minutes that had to be cooked for hours any other way. Today was the day I was waiting for…there was a killing frost at the Great Salkehatchie Swamp. Now the weather was right to cook a pot of chicken soup.
I got some chicken breasts and some celery and some carrots and put them in the pot with an onion and some garlic. Then I added about eight or ten cups of water with some salt and pepper. I sealed the pot up, put it on the stove, and brought it up to pressure. Fifteen minutes later I had a pot of soup. I pulled the breasts out, separated the bones, and put the meat back in the pot. I put the pot back on the stove and turned the burner on. When the broth was hot I put in a bag of egg noodles. It was good soup, I liked it, my wife liked it; but I thought that there was too much soup and not enough substance. I added another bag of egg noodles and declared it finished.
I ladled up two big bowls and me and my wife enjoyed the soup. After I finished my bowl I went back to get some more, being that there was plenty, and I learned my mistake. The egg noodles had absorbed most of the soup and now it was mostly solid. It’s real good. I have every intention of putting it in containers to freeze and reheat to eat later. But now it is not soup. What do I call it?
Rachel Ray calls such things “Stewp” (stew/soup hybrid).
You could try diluting it with more chicken broth to return it to soupiness. When I make soup that needs noodles, I cook those separate and add as needed.
RayRay calls such things stewp because it set out to be soup but is now too thick and turned into what she considers stew. My stews are much thicker than soup, which is more sippable. YMMV.
Adding noodles or rice to soup will generally lead to a pot full of soggy starch. I only do that if I’m serving company and don’t plan to have leftovers. Otherwise, I cook the starch separately, put some into the bowls and ladle the soup over it. Same effect (except for any thickening benefit) and you don’t end up having to name your leftovers “Harvey” or somesuch.
Naw. I have several stew recipes that contain almost no additional liquid except that provided by the meat and vegetables. Stews don’t have to be particularly brothy (and I think many are made too brothy and more like chunky soups that stews.) See pictures of Wikipedia’s stews.
