Courses & dish types
Soups recipes
Liquid, restorative, endlessly variable.
Soup is the most forgiving thing in this collection and the easiest to make bland. Almost every dull soup has the same two faults: the aromatics were not cooked long enough at the start, and it was not seasoned properly at the end. The rest is a choice between the two structures — a clear soup, where the liquid is the dish and everything depends on the stock, and a blended or thickened one, where the body comes from a starch or a purée. Both improve overnight. The recipes here say which kind a dish is, and are specific about the acid at the finish, which is the step that most often turns a flat soup into a good one.
21 recipes
Ukha
Clear freshwater fish broth, never thickened and barely seasoned, so what you taste is the fish and the water it cooked in.
Shoyu Ramen with Chashu Pork
A soy-based broth that tastes long-cooked because it is. The pork rolls the night before, which is most of the work and none of the effort.
Sweetcorn Chowder
A thick corn soup that simmers the stripped cobs in the stock first, then blends only part of itself for body.
Split Pea and Ham Hock Soup
Yellow split peas simmered with a smoked ham hock until they collapse into the broth, thickening the soup with nothing but themselves.
Roast Squash and Sage Soup
Squash roasted until the cut faces caramelise, then blended with stock and sage, which gives a depth that simmering raw cubes never reaches.
Rassolnik
Barley and pickled cucumber soup, sharpened at the end with the pickle brine itself rather than with vinegar.
Pho Bo
Charring the onion and ginger before they go near water is what makes the broth smell like pho rather than beef soup. Everything else is patience.
Okroshka
A cold soup of raw vegetables, ham and egg poured with sour kvass at the table, so nothing in the bowl goes soft.
Hot and Sour Soup
A brothy Sichuan-style soup thickened with a cornflour slurry and finished with vinegar and beaten egg off the heat, so both stay sharp.
Gazpacho
A chilled Andalusian soup of raw tomatoes, cucumber and pepper blended with bread and olive oil, which is what turns it creamy rather than watery.
Solyanka
A thick sour-salty soup of mixed cured meats, brined cucumbers, olives and lemon, built on their brine as much as stock.
Smoked Haddock Chowder
Undyed smoked haddock poached in milk, with that milk becoming the soup and floury potato doing the thickening in place of flour.
Silky Miso Mushroom Ramen
A shiitake and kombu broth that starts with a half-hour soak, finished with white miso and topped with seven-minute eggs.
Shchi
Cabbage soup simmered in meat broth, made sour with sauerkraut in winter and with fresh cabbage in summer.
Roast Tomato Soup
Tomatoes roasted hard with garlic until the edges blacken, then blitzed, so the flavour concentrates instead of thinning out in a pan of stock.
Pasta e Fagioli
Borlotti beans cooked down until half of them collapse, with small pasta cooked in the same pot so the starch thickens everything together.
Mushroom and Barley Soup
Dried mushrooms soaked and their soaking liquor used as the stock, with pearl barley cooked in it until the pot turns thick.
Minestrone
A chunky vegetable soup built on a slow soffritto, with beans and small pasta simmered in the broth so it thickens as it stands.
French Onion Soup
Onions cooked down for an hour until they are jammy and dark, then finished under the grill with a raft of bread and melted cheese.
Chicken Noodle Soup
Poached chicken and vegetables in a clear stock, with the noodles cooked apart so the broth stays clean rather than thick and starchy.
Borscht
Beetroot and cabbage soup built on beef broth, with the grated beetroot added late and with acid so it stays red.