My favorite easy thing to transform boring soups

Although the soup season should end, the frost still threatens parts of the United States just when I should faith my joints to make hamburger pancakes, wind cooling made me transport the Dutch oven to make the soup. Again.

If your palate is tired of the same old soup recipes, I understand – a lot of salt and umami can become boring. This is why you need my trick to arouse new interest in tired flavors (while preparing your palate for spring): just brighten them up with a dose of acidity.

American style soups tend to be strongly concentrated on the salt and salty end of the spectrum of flavors – muffled, pepper, variations of chicken noodles, gludds, chowders and creamy soups. We all sleep on the whole category: the bitter soups. Consider these emblematic dishes: Thai Tom Yum, Chinese Suan La Tang (also called hot and sour soup), German Sauerkrauts, Italian giambottaand Greek soup Avgolemono. And you can brighten up any soup using a few ingredients that you probably have on hand.

How to make bitter soups at home

The addition of a sour element to your soup does not mean replacing the broth with a bottle of vinegar. Rather, it is a question of adding the balance and completing the salty, sweet or savory components. There are several ways to bring acidity in your soups. The dishes I mentioned above use lime juice, vinegar, fermentation, crushed tomatoes and lemon juice to develop their tangy flavors. All these things are easily accessible in your local supermarket, otherwise already in your kitchen.

If you are new in the bitter soups, try to incorporate one of these elements above to start experimenting the flavor. You can certainly use a specific recipe for a particular sour soup (I included one below), but if you are not, simply start with a broth soup that you already like, cut a lemon area and tighten it in the soup. If you don’t have a lemon available, try a teaspoon of vinegar. Taste the soup and take it from there.

If you exaggerate the juice or vinegar during your first try, do not throw the dish – you can add a little more salt, then eat the soup alongside the cooked rice to soften the bite.

A few combinations of fresh flavors to try

Personally, I think that lemon juice is particularly well with most soup that uses chicken broth or a creamy neutral broth. A few spoonfuls of crushed tomatoes work well added to any soup which has beef, pork or sausages. The addition of sauerkraut or kimchi can be a good touch for soups with a lot of potatoes or beans.

A few years ago, my fiancé and I became obsessed with the Avgolemono soup. I do not know what stimulated this (none of us is Greek), but it has become our essential recipe whenever our typical soups range becomes trivial. (If you really want your taste buds to buzz, double the amount of lemon juice.)

Avgolemono soup recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon of olive oil

• ¼ cup of finely sliced ​​carrot

• ½ cup of finely chopped celery

• 3 green onions in finely slices

• 2 tablespoons of finely diced yellow onion

• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped

• ¼ teaspoon of salt

• 3 ½ cups of chicken or vegetable broth

• 1 bay sheet

• ½ cup of jasmine rice (or orzo if you wish)

• 1 cup of cooked and grated chicken

• Lemon juice (about one ¼ cup)

• 1 egg

• Parsley (optional for a garnish)

1. In a medium pot, heat the olive oil over medium-low heat to warm it. Add the carrots, celery, green onions, onion, garlic and salt. Stir often to coat the vegetables in the oil.

2. Once the vegetables are starting to sweat and become translucent, after about two or three minutes, add the broth and bay leaf. Put the heat to the medium and bring the broth to a boil.

3. Incorporate the rice (or orzo) and lower the fire downwards. Let the carbohydrates simmer and cook for about eight to 15 minutes, depending on whether you use orzo or rice.

4. Incorporate the grated chicken.

5. Cap the egg in a medium -sized bowl. Add the lemon juice and whisk well together. Using a ladle, temper the eggs, whisking the hot chicken broth in the egg mixture. Drizzle two or three broth dishes in the egg mixture while you whip quickly. You will see the egg mixture becoming an opaque yellow color. It’s great.

6. Remove the hot burner soup jar and stir the lemon mixture soaked in the soup jar. The broth will become creamy and light. Service garnished with torn parsley if you wish.