The main mistakes when making soup

0

It is impossible to imagine our diet without first courses. We traditionally love filling, hearty soups. Filling soups are soups that are cooked in meat, fish or vegetable broth, adding chopped vegetables and herbs to them. We tell you how you can ruin soup during cooking and how to fix mistakes when cooking soup.

Details

If your soup is based on meat broth, it is best to cook it from a piece of meat with a bone. It is the bone that gives the liquid the necessary rich flavor. Broth from meat with a bone should be cooked for a long time, over low heat, so that the liquid practically does not boil. Broths are cooked with the lid open so that the liquid gradually evaporates and the broth becomes more and more saturated. If you have a large bone and there is little pulp on it, this option for soup will be the best. With such a base, the broth will turn out to be the tastiest and most rich. It is also good if the piece of meat has connective tissue: it will give the most collagen to the water. If you bought pulp, it is better to use it for stewing or making cutlets.

If the soup turns out to be very thick, it is undesirable to dilute it with water. Even if your soup is lean and cooked in vegetable broth. Adding plain water will worsen its taste, make it more liquid. Therefore, for diluting meat soups, it is good to keep frozen meat or chicken broth in the freezer. If you don’t have it, you can take a small carrot, celery root or parsley, or some other vegetables that are in the house and boil them a little. And then dilute the soup with this hot broth. You can also use potato broth. When you dilute the soup, you must definitely bring it to a boil to “mix” the liquids that ended up in the same pot and prevent the growth of bacteria.

The broth for meat soup is cooked for a long time, but the vegetables that you add to the filling soup should not be boiled in water for a long time: this way they lose most of their nutrients, and also lose their shape and taste. Therefore, we put the vegetables into the soup gradually. First, those that cook for a long time. These are large cubes of potatoes, celery roots or carrots. Then – white cabbage, which needs to be cooked for 10-15 minutes, depending on the cutting. Before the end of cooking, we add the vegetable stew, chopped onions and grated soft carrots. They are almost ready and only need to come to a boil with the soup. The last ingredient is greens, sorrel leaves or spinach. They cook quickly. If you use peas, chickpeas or any cereals in the soup, they need to be added before the potatoes.

If you salt the soup right away, you risk getting a too salty first course after cooking. During cooking, the liquid gradually evaporates, and the salt becomes more and more noticeable. Therefore, you need to add it at the end of cooking, a few minutes before the end. When you have already put all the ingredients in the pan, they will be soaked with liquid and salt at the same time and you will have nothing unsalted in the pan. After you have turned off the soup, you can taste it, add salt and spices if necessary. This is called “adjusting to taste”. After that, cover the pan with a lid and leave the soup for 10 minutes so that the boiling subsides, all the ingredients “make friends” and turn into a single dish.

As we explained above, after cooking, it is better to leave the soup for a few minutes on the stove with the lid closed. All the flavors in it are balanced, all the products are salted and absorb each other's aromas. So we don't eat it right away, but let it stand.

Many people like it when there is a spoon in the soup: it is already a full meal, you don't even need a second course. However, you need to keep in mind that such a soup will thicken the next day and turn into almost a stew. And if you dilute the soup after cooking, it will lose a lot of taste. Therefore, it is better not to add too many vegetables and other ingredients. You can focus on a 1 to 1 ratio: approximately one part broth to one part vegetables. You can increase their amount slightly.

If the soup boils a lot during cooking, the vegetables will boil over. Most vegetables contain starch, which will be released and later thicken the soup, making it cloudy. It is best to cook the soup over low heat, avoiding strong boiling, to preserve the shape of the vegetables and their benefits. If you need to bring the soup to a boil, then after the first bubbles appear, the heat should be reduced.