Recently, I was watching Kitchen Nightmares and Gordon Ramsay was schooling someone on how to make broccoli soup.  Ramsay is a purist, and his point was that you shouldn’t attempt to disguise your base (the broccoli, in this case) with other things; because of this, he steamed the broccoli in salt water, put it in the blender, and there was his soup.  It  was a crazy neon-green color and nobody liked it.  They were afraid to say so, because Gordon Ramsay will bite your head off for insulting him, but they kind of danced around saying how they felt.  “It really tastes like broccoli,” they say (sideways glance at their fellow victims), “It’s very…it tastes a lot like broccoli.”

I see where Ramsay’s logic comes from: when you make a soup, it’s tempting to load it up with a lot of extraneous ingredients so as to elevate it from “blended water and broccoli” to “soup.”  But the trick of making a great soup is to balance showcasing your main ingredient with a complementary base, a garnish where appropriate, and (duh) a little bit of fat.  You can’t go overboard, but thing + blender does not = thing soup.  It just doesn’t.  Though if Ramsay’s listening, it does.

Fine Cooking just taught me a great way to cheat on making good soups — just sub in your ingredients and go to town.  Their formula:

You need your vegetable (main ingredient), your fat (butter, olive or vegetable oil — a total of 2 tbsp), your “aromatics” (garlic, onions, shallots, leeks, celery, ginger), your liquid (water, vegetable or chicken broth, wine) and your spices/garnish (spices: fennel, cumin, saffron, thyme; garnish: sour cream, cream, bacon, chives, a potato chip?, etc).

1. Choose your ingredeints (carrots, broccoli, asparagus, potato leek, or something crazy)

2. Cook your aromatics in your fat over low or medium-low heat until they soften and turn translucent, about 8-10 minutes.

3. Add your liquid(s) and your vegetable(s) and cook uncovered over medium heat until the veggies are very tender (=you can pull them apart easily with a fork).

4. Puree in the blender in batches, or use a hand-blender and puree until smooth.

5. Add your dairy, if using, and an acid (this is optional — one squeeze of lemon juice usually makes anything better), stir well, and spoon into bowls.  Add garnish and enjoy.