Soup warms you from the inside out on frigid days, and it is the king of all comfort food when you are sick. We've come to expect rich, soothing broth loaded with vegetables, meat, pasta, or rice, and it can be so disappointing when your bowl of steaming soup is underwhelming. If you take a few moments to master some different ways to season soup, you may never have to face that again. Whether you love chicken noodle soup or stick to the classic combination of tomato soup with grilled cheese, you're sure to discover spices here that will elevate an already-beloved comfort food.
Soup Seasoning
When considering soup seasonings, start with salt. Salt is one of the world's best flavor enhancers, teasing out tremendous nuances and savory goodness when used correctly. Salting to taste is a phrase you will hear a lot in soup preparation, but that phrase is subjective. One person's bland is another's over-salted. Salt strategically during cooking--most notably when cooking down your soup's broth base, which is usually comprised of some basic aromatic vegetables, like onions and carrots. Salt these vegetables as they cook; the vegetables will concentrate and the salt will become a more predominant flavor. After cooking, you can add more salt if you like, and allow the people eating your soup to salt it to their own tastes.
Vegetable Soup Seasoning
What do you do once the cold weather arrives and you want to build a good vegetable soup from a solid, tasty base? Something that's rich, hot, filling, and uses the end-of-season veggies you've got in your fridge? Soup is the great refrigerator cleaner, and you can put just about any vegetables you have into a pot and call it a soup. To season it, we recommend starting with our Vegetable Soup Mix. It contains celery salt, parsley flakes, garlic powder, sea salt, summer savory, marjoram, thyme, black pepper, turmeric and sage, which are all excellent with root vegetables, so you can incorporate things like carrots or potatoes into the soup. To make the flavors pop in your vegetable soup, try a pinch of lemon zest to bring the flavors together.
If you make a black bean soup for dinner, use herbs like Mediterranean oregano or basil. Garnish black bean soup with a finishing salt like Smoky Citrus Salt. Put a finishing salt on after you've distributed the soup to bowls, since finishing salts give texture and visual appeal to the dish.
Sweet potato soup is a savory soup that responds well to sweet spices. Sprinkle the soup with allspice for some extra flavor. Ginger also compliments sweet potato soup well, so add a bit of powdered ginger for soup that's sweet with a bit of heat.
And then there's tomato soup, the eternal cold-weather favorite. Do you want to shake up the recipe that you pulled from your mom's faded cookbook? We suggest Moroccan Vegetable Rub. This seasoning blend gives everyday tomato soup real dimension. It has a little sharpness from the paprika, chili powder, and cayenne, but it also lends a tiny bit of sweetness because of the cinnamon, allspice, and cloves. Whole peppercorns freshly ground over soup before serving turns everyday tomato soup into a showstopper.
When you start making your own soup, you can't go wrong when you start with onion or garlic. Dehydrated vegetables are excellent in traditional vegetable soups as well. Some of our favorites are Dried Shallots, Dehydrated Red Bell Pepper, Dehydrated Green Bell Pepper, Tomato Flakes, Minced Onion and Roasted Garlic Flakes.
Or, add a bay leaf to your recipe. The bay leaf will give the soup a little something extra without overwhelming the dish. Bay leaves perform best when they're allowed to simmer in a dish and slowly release their flavor. Remove the bay leaf before serving; you don't want anyone to choke and whole bay leaves are a known choking hazard.
Spices to use in Chicken Noodle Soup
Chicken soup is good for the soul, or so the zeitgeist says, and it's emotionally connected to warmth, happiness, and security. So what makes a good chicken soup, one that will taste delicious and impart those same feelings? Start with the bright, snappy flavor of Celery Seed, then add some aromatics, like California Minced Onion and California Granulated Garlic. Salt and black pepper round out the basics; from there, try some Poultry Seasoning, or look at our Green Goddess Seasoning to keep it light, bright, and playful.
If you add potatoes or sweet potatoes to your chicken noodle soup, then we suggest that you complement them with cayenne pepper. This is also a great idea if you have a cold; need we say more about hot spices and stuffy noses? Smoked sweet paprika is also delicious in chicken soup. Should you want more of an herbal tasting chicken noodle soup, parsley and dill are perfect because they are both mellow but slightly sweet. These will give you a more pronounced, classic chicken soup flavor.
Broth Seasoning
Sometimes you just want some broth! This might be the case if you have a scratchy throat or an upset tummy.
Broth seasoning depends on what kind of broth you are starting with. A good chicken broth seasoning would be sea salt, which we have already talked about extensively. Herbs de Provence is a spice blend that will help you get a mellow, herbaceous flavor in your broth.
Beef broth is extremely flavorful as is, but you can certainly dress it up with some spices. Try adding cinnamon sticks, cloves, whole coriander and star anise, which recreate the flavor of pho. You could also use pepper to taste. Add these spices in whole or slightly cracked, and strain them out before serving for a flavorful, smooth broth.
Vegetable broth seasoning is very similar to vegetable soup seasoning. Celery seed powder will give a good neutral, grassy flavor to vegetable broth, which will keep it earthy. If you want a spice blend, there are things like Chinese Five Spice and Maharajah Curry that deliver lots of flavor with minimal effort. Spice blends eliminate the need to layer flavors on your own, which is lovely if you are in a rush.
The key to soup making involves testing out different flavors to determine what you like best. It's all a learning process. Enjoy the rest of your winter with these tips on spicing up your favorite soups.
