Homemade Soups

Continuing to stay home and cook is opening doors for fine cuisine I never thought I could do. Over the past week we have made Italian Minestrone as well as New Orleans Okra Gumbo, two of my favorites. Turns out essentially all soups and maybe even stews start out with a mirepoix (/mɪərˈpwɑː/ meer-PWAH; French pronunciation: ​[miʁˈpwa]) which is a flavor base made from cooked, diced vegetables, usually with butter, oil, or other fat, for a long time on a low heat without coloring or browning, as further cooking, often with the addition of tomato purée, creates a darkened brown mixture called pincage (French: pinçage). In the South, for hundreds of years the fat that has been used is fat back, hamhock, or salt pork, and in New Orleans with the French flair, Lardons which is glorified bacon. So most of the time I use bacon and/or sausage. It is not sautéed or otherwise hard cooked, because the intention is to sweeten the ingredients rather than caramelize them. It is a long-standing cooking technique in French cuisine. I also add heavy doses of garlic as I love garlic but garlic is added later as you can burn it if you cook it long enough. 

When the mirepoix is not precooked, the constituent vegetables may be cut to a larger size, depending on the overall cooking time for the dish. Usually the vegetable mixture is onions, carrots, and celery (either common 'pascal' celery or celeriac), with the traditional ratio being 2:1:1, two parts onion, one part carrot, and one part celery.[1] Mirepoix is the flavor base for a wide variety of Western dishes: stocks, soups, stews and sauces. 

Similar flavor bases include the Italian soffritto, the Spanish and Portuguese sofrito/refogado (braised onions, garlic and tomato), as well as the Turkish variation with tomato paste instead of fresh tomato of the eastern Mediterranean/Balkan region, the German Suppengrün (leeks, carrots and celeriac), the Polish włoszczyzna (leeks, carrots, celery root and parsley root), the Russian/Ukrainian smazhennya or zazharka (onion, carrot and possibly celery, beets or pepper), the United States Cajun/Creole holy trinity (onions, celery, and bell peppers), and possibly the French duxelles (mushrooms and often onion or shallot and herbs, reduced to a paste). 

It really is quite simple and after you have prepared the above you then add further ingredients dependent on what kind of soup you want. For Minestrone the basic addition is Herbs of Provence, diced potatoes, something green, kale, spinach, cabbage, and cooked/washed beans of some kind, and add a cheese rind for further flavor. For Gumbo add Gumbo seasonings and/or home cooked Roux("fried" flour in butter) okra, sausage, shrimp, and/or chicken. And the list goes on and on. YouTube has hundreds of 15 minute or less tutorials dependent on what interests you. Freezing a quart for a rainy days lasts for 3 or 4 months and my experience is the longer you simmer it the better and the second day out of the refrigerator warmed up is even better.