This is not my first time to the broccoli soup rodeo, so 3-33: Broccoli Wild Rice Soup should be a snap. 🏇🏼 A while back, I made 3-21: Broccoli-Celery Soup and broccoli is still in season at the time I am writing this post.
Cold isn’t my favorite temperature when eating soup, but with so much sour cream, the soup may separate during reheating. ❄
Simply Delicious has a few New Orleans/Southern recipes–3-4: New Orleans Bean Soup is one of them. There are a lot of different takes on a “New Orleans Red Bean Soup” that exist out there–most of them have more exciting ingredients than this version. 🎺
I made another “New Orleans” recipe at the same time as this one–you can go back and read 12-29: New Orleans Beans and Pasta for what is essentially a pasta version of this dish. Either one is a hearty and relatively inexpensive meal. Since the two share a lot of ingredients, consider making both–they store and reheat well. 💰
I’ve always been a fan of a nice seafood bisque–lobster and/or shrimp bisque on a menu always gets at least a consideration from me, if not an order. 3-18: Shrimp Bisque was a solo affair for me (cream-based things usually are), but I enjoyed every bit of it. 🍤
I’ll admit it right now: I left the peas out of my version (except for the final picture plate–sorry to break the illusion), but you go right ahead and include them if you dig peas.
I can’t count how many different chicken soups I’ve had in my life, but 3-11: Chicken Rice Soup is the latest version I’ve made from Simply Delicious. For this dish, I picked my own lemons and fresh mint from the garden so this dish had extra meaning to me. 🍋🌿
I’ve enjoyed a lot of chicken noodle soups, but chicken rice soup is a different experience.
Simply Delicious has a lot of different kinds of recipes–intricate & laborious French-inspired cuisine as well as simple, weeknight-friendly fare. 3-15: Quick Mexican Soup is obviously (given the name) one of the latter types. Of course, I’ve yet to find a recipe that I don’t make some sort of tweak/edit to, and this recipe will be no different. 🌶
Most Simply Delicious recipes that claim to be Mexican tend to be more “Tex-Mex” than authentically Mexican. I grew up in Los Angeles–real Mexican food is a BIG part of life there. I’m not saying I’m anywhere close to an expert on the subject, but I feel like I’ve got some sense of the cuisine. Simply Delicious has an idea of where they were going with this soup–I’m just going to help it along a bit. 🇲🇽
Jamie made this recipe, 3-21: Broccoli-Celery Soup, for me before on a mild Christmas Eve. 🎅🏽 We were living in Glendale at the time, it doesn’t exactly get cold there. ❄
(Editor’s note: I didn’t make this on Christmas Eve–my mom did. I don’t know which Christmas Eve, but that’s definitely her writing. I did however, make this when we lived in Glendale, CA, and he’s right about that–it doesn’t get that cold there.)
I really enjoyed the soup the first time around, so I took my own shot at cooking this recipe.
It’s the middle of summer right now, so soup’s probably not your first thought. However, I continue to be surprised that how no matter how hot outside it is, people still enjoy soup. So here’s a classic: 3-3: French Onion Soup.
Simply Delicious cites Les Halles (the Parisian farmers’ market, not the NY restaurant where Anthony Bourdain worked) as the originator of French onion soup. I wasn’t able to directly verify that with 5 minutes of lazy Googling, but I did find a food timeline that gives a bit of the dish’s history–I suppose their claim is totally still possible.
Here’s a question for you: is cheese soup really soup? To me, it’s essentially the sauce from macaroni and cheese, thinned down and maybe dressed up with some onions or bacon. Often potato or broccoli gets added as well, in an attempt to “healthify” it. No matter what, it just seems…indulgent. I was on my own to make and eat 3-5: Creamy Cheese Soup, so I kept this one simple.
Don’t get me wrong–I do enjoy broccoli cheese soup (and make one every few months or so for work), but leek & cheese (which this one is) doesn’t excite me as much. This one was a bit leek-y for me, but maybe I just lack appreciation for the leek.
I’ve often talked during this project about my mother and her predilection towards recipe experimentation. One of these instances was where she attempted to make gumbo–I’m not sure where she got the recipe from, but I remember the family failing to choke down poorly cooked okra and my father making a quick run to KFC while she surreptitiously got rid of the rest.
The mere mention of gumbo usually brings this unsavory memory back, and so I attempted 11-26: Fish Gumbo with a fair amount of trepidation.
Roux is something I’ve covered several times throughout this project, and it’s an essential flavor and texture component of gumbo. Letting a roux brown deepens its flavor, and there’s a fine line between too light and over cooked.
It’s been a while since I’ve covered something out of Group 03: Soups on here–the last one was 3-14: Creamy Corn Chowder back in January. 3-20: Italian Tomato Soup is pretty simple when it comes to ingredients…and flavor. I ended up inadvertently turning my batch into what was essentially Spaghetti-Os, but even that wasn’t terrible.
This soup is pretty basic–Simply Delicious has you add a bit of cream to make it more of a bisque-type tomato soup. If it’s not tomato season, no worries–you can make this with canned tomatoes too. 🍅