(Home) Cooking School: Swap Your Soup!

The snowy weather happening outside my window while I write this may not be good for your commute, but it is the perfect inspiration for this week’s edition of (Home) Cooking School. This week we’re cooking, and swapping, all things soup. Not only is it the perfect food for chilly weather, a big pot of soup might save you if the entire city shuts down this week because there’s a solid inch of snow on the ground. And just to give you some bonus incentive, this Saturday, January 21 is National Soup Swap Day! Read on to find out where you can go to swap your soup, see a collection of some of my favorite soup tips and tricks from around the web, and check out my go-to formula for really delicious, extra comforting chili.

For me, soup is good any time of year, but in the winter, it’s transcendant. It’s also generally even better the day AFTER you make it, and I’m a huge fan of anything that generates time-saving leftovers to re-eat during a busy week. Knowing I have something yummy in the house helps prevent me from desperate pizza runs after a long day at work. Most soups are easy to freeze too, so they are pretty much the perfect food to make en masse. And if you like variety in your soup-consumption, then I highly suggest that you get familiar with the concept of a Soup Swap, in which you gather with a group of friends, each person armed with several pints of frozen soup, and trade amongst yourselves. Send out a mass email to your most culinarily talented friends and swap soup this weekend! Or, in case you don’t have friends (in which case you should go make some), or just don’t have friends who make good soup, why  not head to Vermillion on Saturday and participate in the one that one of our friends, Capitol Hill Seattle Blog, is hosting?

Okay, so now that you’re all excited about soup and all the wonderful social events that are associated with it, now we will proceed to this week’s recipe- chili! Now, to be honest, this is less a recipe than a basic formula that you can riff on to your heart’s content. But no matter how you like it or what variation you choose, what you will end up with is a big bowl of deliciousness that you can eat all week, or just trade for a killer bisque on Saturday.

Chili con Whatever

What You Need:

• 2 pounds ground meat (Use what you like- beef, turkey, pork or chicken. I really like to include a pound of fresh Mexican chorizo, especially the kind from Seabreeze farms, which is spendy but ridiculously delicious, in combination with something else.)
• 1 onion, chopped,
• 2 carrots, minced
• 2-4 celery stalks, minced
• 1 28 oz can of chopped tomatoes, or whole ones that you cut up
•  2 tbsp tomato paste
• Garlic (as many cloves as you like)
• Oil (I use olive oil or coconut oil, just use your favorite)
• 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 2 tbsp chili powder
• 1 tbsp cumin
• 1 tbsp coriander
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder (yeah, chocolate makes everything better)
• 1 tbsp smoked paprika (it makes everything taste like bacon)
• Spicy stuff, like red chile flakes, cayenne pepper, etc, to taste
• 1 or 2 cans of beans (use your favorite, or if you hate beans, leave these out)
• 8-16 oz beer or broth (homemade is best, but just use whatever you have and as much as you need to get the right consistency)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Toppings! Whatever makes  you smile- fresh cilantro, sour cream, greek yogurt, salsa, cheese, avocado, bacon… Go crazy.

What You Do

• In a big pan, like a dutch oven, pour in a little oil and start browning the meat over medium to medium-high heat. Sprinkle a bit of salt and pepper on your meat in the pan. You’ll probably need to do this in 2-3 batches, depending on the size of your pan. I know this sounds like a pain in the ass, but it’s worth it- your meat will brown instead of just steam in it’s juices. Scoop up the cooked meat with a slotted spoon and set it aside in a big bowl, reserving the juices in your pan.
• With the pan on medium heat, dump your onion, carrots and celery in the pan, cooking in the reserved meat juice. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper on the veggies, and then dump in all your spices. Cook the veggies for 4-6 minutes until they all look soft. Throw in the garlic and tomato paste and cook for an additional 2 minutes or so, or until your kitchen smells garlicky.
• Put the meat back in your pan/pot. Add the canned tomatoes and 8 ounces of broth or beer. Crank the heat up until things start boiling, then turn it down and let things simmer with the lid just slightly ajar for about an hour. Go watch something good on Netflix.
• After about an hour, check your chili. Taste it, add salt, pepper or spicy stuff as needed. Let it simmer, uncovered, for about 20 minutes or so.
• Eat your chili, and then package up the leftovers into pint containers (we really love Mason jars for this) to freeze for your upcoming soup swap.

Seriously, it’s that easy and you get a ton of food- this makes at least 8 big servings. Once you get the technique down, you can go crazy with it- add more veggies or beans if you’re feeling virtuous, or use culinary rocket fuel, aka bacon, instead of olive oil. Chili- it’s delicious, it’s cheap, and it goes over great at Soup Swaps.

Here are some links to some other soup-tastic things…

• A dutch oven is a big, heavy pot with a funny name that is perfect for making a lot of soup. They also tend to be really expensive. I love my Tramontina because it makes great soup, comes in fun colors and costs less than half as much as the fancy Le Creuset kind. If you are serious about soup, spend $85 on this one.
• Pouring soup into a blender to make it smooth is asking for trouble unless you have housecleaners on call. Instead, spend $35 and use an immersion blender that you can stick right in your soup pot.
• Want more soup inspiration? This is my favorite soup cookbook ever.
• Almost all of these soup recipes look amazing, and there is something for everybody.

I’m craving a second helping of soup right now, so I’m signing out. In the meantime, tell us all about your favorite soup recipes on Twitter, Facebook or in the comments section below. And while you’re at it, tell us what we should get cooking for next week’s edition of (Home) Cooking School.