Small Win #11: A simple formula for soup

A convenient one-size-fits-all recipe

Nov 23, 2024

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We are well into soup-making season, but here’s the thing: I find that I don’t make soups as much as I would like.

Somehow it’s hard to find a good of soup recipe, and often the ones I like best are written by Ottolenghi and involve a fairly lengthy ingredient list. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but I suppose what I’m generally looking for in a soup is something that’s tasty but fundamentally simple to make — something warm and nutritious that will do for a weekday lunch or dinner.

That’s why today I’m sharing with you a simple, stripped-back-to-essentials formula to make soup with pretty much any vegetable.

One of the things I’ve always loved about

Anna Jones

is the way that she breaks down dishes such as salads and curries into flavour maps, enabling you to understand the purpose of each component, and how you can take the dish in multiple flavour directions. It was her curry paste matrix in the Guardian that had me inspired to produce something similar for soups.

The timing of the universe can be funny because when I first started working on this recipe/matrix several weeks ago (it’s taken a surprising amount of testing),

India Knight

mentioned Anna’s flavour map for soups in A Modern Way to Eat — which, up until then, I wasn’t aware existed as I don’t own that specific title. I wasn’t going to throw out all the work I had already spent developing and testing this formula, so I guess you can simply consider this my version!

A disclaimer is required here: this is not about producing the best soup you will ever taste in your life — it’s about being able to consistently turn out good soup with little effort or thought. It’s pretty much a rinse-and-repeat formula, with just a few small, manageable choices to be made along the way. I hope you’ll find it helpful!

Love,
Alexina

Coming up on Small Wins — As we head towards the end of 2024(!), we’ll be covering the very best roast potatoes, and talking about the importance of cranberries.

For my Small Wins+ community — This month it’s everything you need to know about chicken. And arriving on 1st December is a Christmas dinner 101! How to treat your turkey right, the ultimate make-ahead gravy, the best way to cook a parsnip and a whole Christmas dinner plan including shopping list, prep plan and on-the-day checklist. Become a paid subscriber to receive the full guide directly into your inbox.

WHAT MAKES SUCH A SIMPLE FORMULA WORK

Spinach soup with crispy baked feta + sourdough coroutons

1/ Not skimping on the fat

When you’re keeping soup this simple, fat is essential for several reasons:

It provides body
It ensures a silky texture and mouthfeel
It carries flavour (particularly if aromatics are added at the beginning of the process)

I tried all butter, and I tried all olive oil but neither quite worked for all vegetables — often the all butter versions ended up too rich, and the butter flavour could be quite dominant. Conversely, all olive oil felt a bit frugal, especially with the quicker-cooking, high water content vegetables.*

What worked well across the board was half butter, half olive oil — the butter offering creaminess and richness, the olive oil some counterbalancing bitterness.

*Of course, if you’re vegan, all olive oil works well — you may just need to add some richness and/or body to your soup using ingredients such as avocado, cashews, silken tofu (etc.).

2/ Harnessing the magic of steaming

I’ve spoken about the merits of steaming before and, in this case, allowing the vegetables to properly sweat down in a covered pot teases out their sweetness and ensures a silky finish.

3/ Flavourful foundations

Your soup will only ever be as tasty as its foundations, which is the stock! This doesn’t mean you need to buy the fancy stuff (this post is all about making an everyday kind of soup, after all) but what I am saying is that the you need to pay attention to how tasty your stock is and adjust the seasoning accordingly. I use Knorr stockpots (the chicken or vegetable ones) or Bouillon powder for everyday use.

4/ Creative garnishes

Excellent garnishes can transform an average soup into a good one, an excellent soup into a transcendent one.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

A dollop of creme fraiche or soured cream (fantastic with beetroot soup)
A sprinkling of dukkah (particularly good with any root vegetable soups, or cauliflower)
A drizzle of paprika-infused browned butter (fantastic over a lentil soup)
A handful of crispy lardons (perfect atop a pea soup)
A cheese toastie (the ideal accompaniment to a tomato soup)
A scattering of fresh herbs
A few crisped cubes of halloumi
A swirl of harissa
A traditional scattering of croutons
A soft-cooked egg, broken open (lovely with spinach soup)

The options are (almost) endless!

THE SMOOTHEST OF SOUPS

I love a stick blender for pureeing soups and purees — not only will it give you a super smooth result, but you can do it straight in the pot which saves on washing up.

I’ve had mine for years — a heavy-duty Kenwood model that is no longer available to buy — but if I were purchasing a stick blender today, based on how much I love my Dualit electric hand mixer (with its retractable cord!!), I would probably opt for this one: Dualit hand blender (not an affiliate link, since I haven’t tested it myself!). It’s a useful and compact piece of kitchen kit.

A quick tip
Blend your soup for twice as long as you think you need to — this is how you achieve that silky smooth texture akin to the soups and purées that you would find in a fancy French restaurant (the butter helps, too).

A FORMULA FOR GOOD SOUP WITH ANY VEGETABLE

Good soup is a simple formula:

Good soup = fat + base + veg + liquid + flavour booster + garnish

And the recipe here, which serves 4, is:

40g slightly salted butter
40ml olive oil
2 white onions, finely chopped (yielding approx. 2 cups) - you could use shallots instead
4 cloves garlic, finely slices
3/4 tsp fine sea salt
800g (1 3/4 lbs) vegetable of choice, peeled and finely chopped or sliced — you want your prepped veg to be as close to 800g as possible, so you’ll typically need to buy a bit extra
1 litre chicken or vegetable stock (I typically use Knorr stock pots, or Bouillon powder) — you can play around with the liquid, subbing part of it for milk or coconut milk, if you like
A flavour booster, or two (spices, citrus, herbs etc.)
A garnish, or several

If it’s a lighter, high-water content vegetable then you also throw in a couple of small potatoes (peeled and chopped, of course), for added body.

The method is important too:

Heat the butter and olive oil together in a pan, then infuse any hard herbs (sage, rosemary etc.) or whole spices for 2 mins. If using hard herbs, remove them after this time (spices can stay).
Add the onions, garlic, salt and potato (if using), stir everything together then place a lid on the pan. Allow to cook on a low heat until everything is soft and glistening but hasn’t got any colour, around 10 to 15 minutes.
Add your veg, replace the lid and allow to cook until the veg has fully softened, another 10 to 15 minutes.
Add the stock and leave the lid off from this point. Bring the soup to a light simmer and allow to cook for another 10 minutes. Liquidise the soup using a stick blender (or another type of blender) and then stir through any flavour boosters. Taste and adjust the seasoning, if needed. Garnish as preferred.

A slightly different method for spinach soup
When it comes to the spinach soup, add the stock first, bring to a simmer then add the leaves and remove the pan from the heat. Allow the spinach leaves to wilt for 1 minute before blending and continuing per the recipe.

THE FLAVOUR MATRIX

You could take any vegetable plus the formula detailed above and run with it, pretty much…

However, I have laid out a soup flavour matrix with my recommended flavourings for each vegetable below. (If reading in email, you’ll need to click on the table to be able to view it fully and scroll across.)

The same information is also available in this Google Sheet.

And here’s a printable PDF:

Soup Flavour Map (small Wins By Alexina)

115KB ∙ PDF file

Download

This soup flavour map includes any straightforward deviations from the formula that I believe make the soup better — e.g. when making jerusalem artichoke soup I like to replace half the stock with milk.

Bonus: in the Google Sheet there’s also a tab called ‘PICK YOUR VEG’. On this sheet you can select the vegetable that you’re working with from a drop-down list:

And then the recipe will populate underneath, like so:

Do let me know if this sort of thing is helpful (or not!).

P.S. I haven’t tested it, but I suspect that for the root veg soups a proportion of the veg could be replaced with split red lentils for extra fibre and protein. You’d probably need to up the liquid slightly and add extra salt. And I would throw some spices in there too. But I’m pretty sure it would work.

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