Semi-Homemade: Soup
I don’t even know if this counts as semi-homemade, but I make “semi-homemade” soup all the time, so it seemed worth sharing with the world. What is semi-homemade soup? It is soup that would be plain and boring if just heated up out of the carton, but is instead delicious and wonderful because you’ve added some of your own flavah to it. Plus, it’s even easier than semi-homemade tomato sauce.
Start with a carton of some kind of creamy soup (this will not work with chicken noodle, say). I usually use either the Trader Joe’s soups or Imagine Organic — they both come in cartons, and in flavors like butternut squash (my favorite), corn, tomato, and red pepper. That is not something I want to eat by itself. I want some texture to my meal, and some variable flavor elements.
So that’s where semi-homemade comes in. These are the things I typically add to soup, not all at once, but usually at least a couple:
- Fried bacon, torn into large pieces
- Goat cheese, crumbled
- Red pepper flakes or cayenne (careful!)
- Chopped raw red onion or sliced green onion
- diced tomato
- slices of sausage (fresh and sautéed), salami, or chorizo
- Annie’s cheddar bunnies (even better than Goldfish!)
- a little more salt, and freshly ground pepper, always
And there you have it. This photo, as you can see, is from the night I made my garlic scape sandwich, but felt it wasn’t quite enough. Yet, I didn’t want to do a single other thing in the kitchen, or have too much to wash. Semi-homemade soup, using just the ingredients in your well-stocked kitchen. If you build the better kitchen, the better food will come.
