Kitchen Garden Forum

Hi Alan.

Now that is plain daft & won't be putting any of them on the Xmas list!

Westi

I'm busy making soup, soup is convenient, it's very tasty because the beholder is the inventor.

I'm making soup with a few left-overs and sad-looking bits-and-pieces though key ingredients will accompany whatever leftovers and sad-looking bit's.

I hate throwing anything away, least of all food. Cooking for one means you have to eat the same-old-same-old or end up throwing stuff in the bin.

How come I never emptied half a bottle of the good-oils down the sink ?

It's a sad fact that some people will drink the last dregs rather than use sensible storage though with vegetables they get binned at the slightest sign of not looking their best though this isn't the case with soup-makers.

You following this ?

Yep! Knocking on an open door here Richard.

My 'himself' quite looks forward to the days I work evenings as he has a good old fry up of left-overs (very often with the addition of black pudding) but my favorite is a 'left-overs' omelette, fried cooked carrot is great! Any tired veggies make their way to soup or at the very least some stock.

My grans would have had fit to see how much food people are prepared to throw away.

MW

My small pan of soup will be fabulous for a few days yet, it's going in the freezer in suitable containers.

This evenings soup was raised above "Soup" by the addition of a nice chunk of good bread and I can't imagine how much the pan-full has cost. Or rather, hasn't cost.

Sadly not that many home grown ingredients other than a few herbs, the onion and garlic. I've been putting kale in most soups and adding it to every meal for weeks now, time to give it a break.

We make two types of soup - fridge soup and specific soup. Fridge soup is what you might think - leftovers. They're always good if unpredictable. Usually carrot or pea based.

The others are more designer soups - today I have made cream of chicken soup and mushroom and mustard soup. Both are great and both are cheap and satisfying. An organic chicken cost £4.99. I used the carcass and some of the scrapings of meat for the soup. The rest of the chicken went into a pie and a risotto, so we had at least 6 servings for less than £5.00, plus the soup for 3 or 4 portions.

A tub of mushrooms cost less than 50p and I made 8 portions from that along with onions, mustard and a dash of sherry.

If I want to buy a tub of soup at lunchtime, the best local provider sells me a choice of 4 or more at £3.50 a portion. They are good, but that seems expensive to me. I reckon I can make a good soup for between 30p and 60p. It takes no time and you on;y need a hand blender which costs less than a fiver at Sainsbury's.

I bought a soup maker a few months ago its about to join the coffeemaker, preasure cooker, juicer, breadmaker and a few more unused overpriced pieces of junk all spending their lives on the garage shelf

I've just reverted to an old fashioned mincer that clamps onto the worktop. I've had all sorts of problems with high powered mincers for making burgers etc so have gone low tech. Sometimes we're sold the idea of easy this, that and the other but in the end it's the simple solutions that work.

MW

Motherwoman wrote:I've just reverted to an old fashioned mincer that clamps onto the worktop.
MW

That brings back memories, my mother always used one. Presumably for sausage meat and mince and making use of carefully trimmed cheaper cuts.

Our favourite soup needs a gadget, either the hand-help blender or the stand alone machine which to be perfectly honest stands alone mostly.

My old Kenwood mixer only comes out for high gluten dough, the sloppy doughs get mixed with a Danish whisk, if you don't have one, get one. They are fantastic and look good. Easier to clean than the traditional whisk and you don't get all the ingredients left in the middle bit.

I still regularly use a very old Spong mincer, particularly for mincing peanuts to mix with suet to turn into fat blocks for the birds! Works like a dream.

Monika wrote:I still regularly use a very old Spong mincer,

Ahh-yes, thats the name I was trying to drag out of the mist that is often my memory.

I just made soup for the the first time using celeriac, absolute disaster.

I had previously made a pan of soup and made the mistake of too much potato, this is our favourite freezer soup. Celery, leak, onions, garlic and herbs with a little potato to thicken rather than for nutrition. Too much potato adds too much starch (For-me) and it gets all frothy.

I had hoped that doing another pan without potato then adding the stuff with too much potato would solve the problem but the celeriac has starch whereas celery has very little.

Celeriac and celery may-well share a taste, they appear to be quite different in this case though though whole thing revolves around personal tastes.

I'm fairly sure the whole lot is destined for the the Number (2) composter.

I made celeriac soup this weekend - celeriac, potatoes and mustard as the main ingredients with the usual base of stock and vegetables, plus a drop of milk or cream. It was gorgeous.

As I'm fed up with sitting around and doing very little ( doctors orders) I thought I would try to make a pan of soup ,this is what I did and well worth it
1.5 pounds of tomatoes
2 large onions
Quarter the onions and tomatoes put on a baking tray drizzle with oil and roast in oven for around 45 minutes you want them to be darkening not black gas mark 5
Meanwhile make 1 pint of vegetable stock when the onions and toms are roasted put into stock and simmer for 10 minutes take off the heat when cool blitz return to the pan reheat when required
You can also add peppers and garlic it's up to the individual

Sounds lovely Robo! Thank you for sharing.

Well done robo.

How about some nice home made bread to go with the soup. Making bread, lime growing your own veg isn't as easy as the marketing people make out so I can't quite see the point in all the recent enthusiastic push to get us all baking.

I have made some good bread though to be honest if you live close to one of the recently emerged artisan bakeries you'll struggle to make better bread.

I'm about to try proper yeast rather than instant and I have a store of sour-starter in the fridge that is soon to be jiggled up.

Give it a try robo.

I've used a bread maker for years it's on its last legs but it has been great in its time, my wife bakes bread by hand but not very often of late one of her aunties was famous for her bread using potatoes in it I'm talking 50 or so years ago she never got the recipe but tasted it on many occasion she has spent half her life trying to match it, myself I like soda bread with soup