I have to tell you all a little secret. I wasn't going to post a soup this week. I'm going out of town and I just didn't think it would be possible. Well of course over my lunch hour I was looking through soup recipes and one stood out to me. It was titled, and I quote, "Easy Wonton Soup." The title of this recipe caught my heart immediately. Easy. Yes! Wonton Soup. Yes! I have this newfound obsession with Asian style soups. I love Chinese-inspired, Vietnamese-inspired, and Thai-inspired soups. In fact, my husband and I go out for Foh at least once or twice a month. It is by far one of my very favorite meals any time of year. So when I saw this recipe pop up I thought- well, now that I've seen it I have to make it. I made a quick stop at the grocery store after work. I didn't have my usual photographer with me (my husband), so I had to selfie it up. Let me tell you, you get some pretty weird looks taking selfies with green onions in the middle of the grocery store. Instead of wontons, the recipe suggests frozen potstickers. I personally think this is a great idea in many ways- makes the recipe quick and easy. However, anytime you incorporate anything frozen I guess it adds some extra ingredients that make it less "pure" than maybe some of the other soups. I did enjoy the potstickers available at our local grocery store- not too many ingredients that I would consider "bad" (preservatives, etc.). Ingredients
Cliffnotes VersionThis recipe IS easy. I mean, easy. The "Cliff notes" version is practically the real version. 1.) Put ginger, garlic, soy sauce, and chicken broth in a pot 2.) Bring to boil 3.) Add pot stickers, onions, and carrots 4.) Simmer for 10 minutes 5.) Add sesame oil (had never heard of this until this recipe) Since I've been doing this a couple weeks now, I felt like I could experiment a little bit with the recipe. Therefore, I added more green onion than the recipe called for, and a little more garlic than what is listed. I think this was definitely a good choice, since it fills out the broth more (and I love green onion). When (not if) I make this again, I would probably buy more broth, and add more of every ingredient except the wontons. Basically I just want more than this recipe made. Is it bad that this recipe was one of the easiest I've made and one of my absolute favorites?!? I suppose that's definitely a good thing :) I couldn't stop eating this soup right after I made it. I was enjoying it immensely, and then realized that I hadn't taken a picture of it yet! It was hard to stop eating it long enough to take the picture. Needless to say I'll be making this again. This picture makes me hungry, and I just ate dinner. Feel free to comment if you try this recipe, or if you have any other easy recipes you would recommend! Enjoy!
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Hi everyone! This week I'm making an easy butternut squash soup recipe, which is pretty exciting for two reasons: The first is that I've never made a butternut squash soup before. The second is that I get to use my new immersion blender!! I've always considered squash a difficult vegetable, just because it seems "pumpkin-like" in that it can be very hard and has seeds. I thought this recipe was interesting because, unlike my first thought, you bake (or roast) the squash WHOLE, before you even cut it. This certainly made the cutting much easier. Apparently "heavy cream" and "heavy whipping cream" are the same....thank you, Google. Fresh sage and veggies! Yummm! The Ingredients
1.) Chop onion, sage, apple 2.) Put whole squash(es) on a foil-lined pan and "baste" with oil (I used olive oil) 3.) Bake squash at 375 for 1 hour (ish) 4.) Melt butter in pot and add onion until translucent 5.) Add apple and heat until soft 6.) Add garlic and red chili flakes 7.) Peel squash and put flesh in onion mixture (this gets messy) 8.) Add broth and bring to boil 9.) Add cream and sage 10.) Blend! Great recipe- I really enjoyed the soup. I topped with pumpkin seeds, like the recipe suggests. I also added a little brown sugar on top because I needed some sweetness :)
If you try this recipe, or have another butternut squash soup recipe, comment below! Enjoy! I absolutely love french onion soup. It is my default soup choice on any menu. When I saw this french soup recipe I realized that it never really occurred to me to make it myself, nor did I have any idea how to make it. We hit the grocery store and stocked up on supplies- basically a bunch of onions, chicken stock, and beef stock. Shopping for supplies! Onion extravaganza! Yes, I purchased soup crocks because of this recipe. The thought of laying a cheese slice over the top of the crock and broiling until bubbly was just too much for me to NOT go for the crock. As a side note: is "crock" the correct term for this? It sounds silly, but I don't know what else you'd call it. The woman at the store looked at me like I had five heads when I asked where they were. Without further ado......the recipe: Ingredients4 Tbs of Butter (unsalted) A few tablespoons of olive oil or vegetable oil (your preference) 4 to 6 medium to large onions. I use a mix of spanish/white/and sweet (Valida or Mayan) 1 quart chicken stock (stock not broth) 1 quart beef stock Salt Pepper Croutons (either store bought or you can make them) Gruyere, Swiss, or provolone cheese (your choice) "Cliff Notes" Version of Recipe1.) Chop oinions forever and ever (and henceforth smell like onions forever and ever) 2.) Melt butter and oil in bottom of pot 3.) Add onions 4.) Stir until onions get brown-ish 5.) Add the stock(s?) 6.) Bring to simmer for several hours (or until you get too impatient to eat it) A couple comments about this recipe. First of all, I think you need a bigger pot than what I have. Once I chopped up the mound of onions, they basically filled half the pot I own. This makes carmelizing the onions difficult. It still worked, but I couldn't use all the onions and carmelizing them took awhile. My bad. I would recommend carmelizing in a larger-diameter frying pan, and then transferring over to the pot once carmelized. Secondly, I didn't realize how long carmelizing the onions would take (although see comment above for why this could be the case). It took about 20-25 minutes to get some color on the onions. I noticed that there was also a change in the smell once they started to brown a bit. For some reason I thought this would be a very quick process since it seems like everything else I cook burns in 30 seconds. You'll all be shocked to know that I did make my own croutons. This was pretty easy, since I just cut up a small loaf of french bread into narrow slices, brushed each side with olive oil (fancy), sprinkled with salt, and garlic powder. Then I used the broiler to toast them until they were golden brown. Another surprise was that our broiler is located under our main oven, which as a side note, is very inconvenient when you have a fear of burning things. Basically I had to lay on the floor to watch my little crustinis. Before During Cooking After A final note is that I apparently don't know the difference between boiling and simmering. I think my heat was up too high, and half my liquid was gone in about 30 minutes of cooking. Rookie mistake. Otherwise, the soup was delciious! My Soup Picture from RecipeMore picturesAs a first stab at "soup-making" I selected a tasty-looking recipe from Pinterest. I didn't realize how many spices were included until I was at the grocery store, looking at the list. In reality, it isn't THAT many (some I actually had, surprisingly), and the recipe was very quick to make. (Even for me it was about a half hour, total). The first step was to chop the jalapeno and onion. Honestly, this was the most time-consuming part of the whole recipe. I like that you can adjust the spiciness of the recipe by either including the jalapeno seeds or not. Because I didn't feel like picking out the seeds, I just included them. The final result was pretty spicy (not too spicy for me), but can be mellowed out by sprinkling cheese on top and adding some sour cream. Heating the jalapeno and onion together, and then adding garlic made me feel like a cooking goddess. Regardless of how bad of a cook you are, when you heat garlic and peppers it smells amazing. I made a conscious effort to keep stirring these ingredients so they wouldn't burn (my stirring was probably a bit excessive). For the first time I also included all the spices listed (except the cilantro). Usually I skip some of the spices because I figure they can't have much of an impact if you only add a teaspoon or two. There are some cooks out there that are probably cringing. You'll be happy to know that I added even those "trace" spices, and I think it really did make a difference (go figure). A final note: The recipe does have a section for making homemade tortillia strips. There was no way I was doing that, so I just bought a bag of tortilla crunchies at the grocery store. The recipe was still great :) Check out this link for original recipe: http://www.averiecooks.com/2015/09/easy-30-minute-homemade-chicken-tortilla-soup.html Ingredients:
Cliffnotes version of recipe: 1.) Heat oil in large pot 2.) Add onion and jalapeno (stir until soft) 3.) Add garlic and stir for a minute (enjoy the aromatic scents) 4.) Add all other ingredients 5.) Bring to boil for 5-7 minutes My version: Picture from recipe:The picture from the recipe does look better, but in all fairness the picture I took was without the tortilla strips, and without the other acoutremants. I also was packing up the soup for my husband and my lunches (which was delicious reheated, by the way).
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March 2017
CategoriesAbout This BlogI don't have time to cook. Follow my journey as I try to make a different, easy recipe every Sunday. You know if I can make it and it tastes good, you can. |