HOMEMADE SOUP RECIPES: 103 Easy Recipes for Soups, Stews, Chilis, and Chowders Everyone Will Love by Addie Gundry

PUBLISHER: St. Martin's Griffin, 3/2018
GENRE: Cookbooks/Main Dish
PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: B

FROM PUBLISHER: Cooking gets cozy with stovetop and slow cooker soups, stews, chilis, and chowders for the whole family to enjoy, in Cutthroat Kitchen star Addie Gundry's collection of homemade soup recipes.

In Addie's home, the delightful sound of a simmering pot on the stovetop signals that a hearty soup or stew is on its way. When it comes to creating a cozy atmosphere and showing off your cooking chops, there's nothing like an easy homemade soup recipe to bring family together. This cookbook has classics like Old-Fashioned Potato Soup and Beef Stew, as well as new culinary hits like Chicken Parmesan Soup and Pulled Pork Chili. Each recipe is paired with a gorgeous full-color, full-bleed finished dish photo.

THINGS I'VE MADE

ITALIAN WEDDING SOUP

This was supposed to be made in a slow cooker but I just made it on the stove and made half the recipe. Half yielded three servings. I used a homemade beef meatball recipe from this book in place of store-bought meatballs. I used orzo pasta, 1/3 c. but it was a little too much. Will use 1/4 c. next time. I used 1/4 t. salt and a pinch of red pepper flakes. I used thawed and drained frozen spinach in place of fresh. This was simple to make and tastes good.

SWEDISH MEATBALLS

These meatballs goes with the Swedish Meatball Soup recipe. I don't like the flavoring of Swedish meatballs so I made them, omitting nutmeg and allspice. So I used fresh bread for breadcrumbs, garlic powder, egg, salt, pepper, cream (I used half and half) and ground beef. You just stir all the ingredients together with a fork in a large mixing bowl, roll into balls and fry them a little until they've browned, then transfer them to a baking sheet and bake them for an additional 10 minutes or so until they've cooked through. I made half the recipe and got 18, which I cut in half after they'd cooled and placed in a zip-top bag and froze them until I needed them.

Edit: I made another batch of these, minus the allspice and nutmeg, and used them for spaghetti.

CHICKEN TORTILLA SOUP

This is really good and is basically the same as one I make all the time. This is made with chicken broth, onion, garlic, chili powder, chipotle, and fire roasted tomatoes, which I puréed in the food processor first and used half. I left out the chicken, red bell pepper and carrot. I don't like peppers and I don't like carrot in Mexican dishes. I added 1/2 c. uncooked white long grain rice. I used far less salt than called for, just 1/4 t. and the recipe called for 1 t. and a full can of tomatoes, which is salted. I didn't decorate the top of my bowl of soup with colored tortilla strips or cilantro.

What I do with canned chiptole in adobe sauce, which is smoked jalapeños in a spicy tomato sauce with cooked green and red pepper and onion, is I put the contents in a food processor and purée it. I put the mixture in a quart freezer zip-top bag. When I want to use it I get out a measuring spoon and scrape off what I need of it. For this recipe I used 1 t. of the frozen mixture for 4 c. of broth for a mild spice.

SAUSAGE AND LENTIL SOUP

This was supposed to be made in a slow cooker but I made half in a pot on the stove. I used precooked green lentils (3/4 c. that turned into 1 3/4 c. and took 20 minutes to cook) in place of brown because I couldn't find brown, and left out the Worcestershire sauce. This has onion, garlic, thyme, bay, carrot, and beef broth in it. I used 1/3 of a 14 oz. fully cooked Kielbasa sausage in it that I quartered. It's very easy to make but I'd have liked it better without the sausage.

COUNTRY CHICKEN STEW

This recipe was a cool concept. You combine a can of condensed chicken soup with milk, seasonings, peeled and cubed raw potato, vegetables, cover and cook until done, then add in cooked chicken. This took a lot longer to cook than stated. The flavor of the stew got watered down, probably from the steam that dripped back down into it from the lid. I'd make this again but just half of it and I'd add in some chicken base that I use that comes in a jar for added flavor.

MY THOUGHTS: I really like this book. Most things in it are so simple to make. My favorite from the things I made were the meatballs because I've made them twice and used them for several different dishes. Second favorite was the chicken tortilla soup because you can't go wrong with Mexican flavors.

The book is full-color with a nice big photo of the finished recipe. There are still quite a few recipes I'd like to make, including Old World Peasant Soup, Pasta e Fagioli Soup, White Bean Chicken Stew, and Made-from-Scratch Minestrone Soup.

I received this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.