How to Make Basic Soups

Utilize these two methods to use up vegetables from the garden.

Photo taken by the author

At the farm, we would host an open house each fall and make two vegetable soups straight from the farm. Served with salad and bread, it was the most effortless catering event I have ever seen. The members that visited the farm raved about the soup and always asked for the recipes.

I thought this was odd because the recipes were so simple. There were barely recipes to share. But I would walk them through the steps and write down the formula the best I could.

I wanted to convey the message that you can make a soup from any vegetable following a few basic techniques.

Broth-Based Soup

We would literally dump chopped vegetables in a pot, add water and salt, and heat it up to make a broth-based soup.

This isn’t the best method, as explained by Serious Eats. When you add raw vegetables to water, you limit their cooking because the water only heats to boiling, 212 °F, and there is more space between the vegetables compared to sauteing.

When you sweat or sauté the vegetables before adding water, the cooking method provides higher temperatures and reduces the space between the vegetables. These techniques produce different compounds, mellowing the sulfur…