How do I soup good...

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Buy pic related and read it cover to cover.
This is what I did when I was a young cook in the mid to late 90s.
Studying this gave me insight and techniques that I wouldn't have been able to pick up simply just following recipes.
There's also a bit of history involved.

James Peterson is not a chef, he's a food writer. But he's a food writer from a different era; pre-internet blog. He delves into the history and techniques more than most are willing to do.

I work in the industry and have for longer than I care to admit, and feel like I can make a shitty soup taste good (I will "fix" soups that the prep kitchen makes that lack luster) because I studied this tome.

tl:dr
If your soup sucks add:
fat -cream, butter, etc
salt -soy sauce, fish sauce, etc
sour -lemon, vinegar, etc
sugar -sucrose, fructose, etc
If your soup sucks, it's probably unbalanced. Balance the above flavor profiles.

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Roux and mirepoix are your friends. They want you to have good soup, so they made themselves nice and accessible, easy to learn techniques that almost anyone could do.

Roux is a cooked paste made of half flour and half oil, used to thicken soups to that nicd silky consistency. The oil can be just about any kind lf oil you'd use to cook, so choose one that works well with the other soup ingredients. Butter is the standard though. You simply heat the grease on low in a pan, then sieve the flour in slowly while whisking. You don't want any lumps. Cook while whisking constantly until the roux reaches the desired color. The roux should be light off-white, blonde, dark brown, or even black depening on the dish.

Mirepoix is even simpler, just cut up onions, celery, and carrots into tiny pieces, throw them in a pot with your oil of choice, and cook them on low until the vegetables start to "sweat" out their juices. Then they can be added to the soup to build a very savory flavor. The exact vegetables you use can vary by dish. Most Cajun soups and stews use bell peppers instead of carrots, to form the Cajun "holy trinity".

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There is a chapter in this book on the how's and why's of stock making.
How to make stock, why you shouldn't over-cook them... etc.

Have this book sitting not 3 feet away from me, it's quite good.
Good suggestion user.

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I made some chicken stock in my crock pot once, turned out pretty good. The key ingredient to a good stock is using bones, cartilage, and a little meat to make it. The leftover carcass of a grocery store rotisserie chicken was what I used. That went into the crock pot with water, a shitload of salt, and the vegetable trimmings from making the side dishes from that meal. Onion skin for color, carrot ends and peels, potato peels, and a few leftover chunks of vegetable. In addition to that, I spiced it with sage, turmeric, and black pepper. After that's all mixed, you just cook it on low for 8 hours to a day. Then you fish out the big pieces, strain the stock iwht a sieve, put it in the fridge to cool, and scoop off the fat when it solidifies at the top. The turmeric and onion skin really give it a rich color.

experience op,
1st question:
>clear or blended
2nd question: what to do with your vegetable
>use raw,blanch,boil or brown in oven are the usual options
3rd question: what liquid do you use
>water,stock,milk,juice
4th question: what extras do you add and when
>spices,herbs,seasonings...

it all depends on your vegetables and what you want to achieve, you can make a million different soups out of each single vegetable and theyll mostly taste good, soup is forgiving.
the worst you can do is usually to just use water as the cooking liquid and boil the vegetables in said water.
also its usualy wiser to limit yourself on a couple of ingredients

There is a chapter in THIS book Sorry.

It really taught me a lot when I was "school of hard knox" studying about food. School wasn't much of an option at the time.
I can fart out soups that always get compliments because I have a good grasp on balancing flavors. I don't mean it in a brag way. I feel it's a rudimentary skill for a professional. But the skill needs to be taught and learned. I literally read this book cover to cover just before I got my first sous chef position. It was my soup skills that helped me get the position.
Rather, it was my desire to learn and self-teach that got me the position; it was James Peterson's writing that helped me know what I was doing. That and Food Lover's Companion.

Different times.

>the worst you can do is usually to just use water as the cooking liquid and boil the vegetables in said water.
explain pls

well flavour has to come from somewhere, so if you use plain water and dont do anything with your vegetables beforehand you will end up with a thin and bland soup, its hard to fix afterwards though you can make anything taste good if you get the balance right, as the pro-cook before said.

Put a monkeys head in it

Are those oxtales

Yes it was an oxtail stew

put whatever you want in a high powered blender, hit puree. let it puree for 2 minutes. hot soup in 2 minutes; top it w/ wtvr u want.

Water has no flavor. Why would you want to add a no-flavor ingredient to your soup?

You use stock or broth. This provides additional flavor, and in the case of meat-based stocks it also provides texture.

Good stock is the #1 key to making good soups. There's a reason why stock making is one of the the first things taught in cooking school, and is the first subject covered in most good cookbooks.

is bullion an acceptable sustitue in a pinch?

Yeah, that's what bullion cubes/paste is for. It's a shortcut if you don't have proper stock.

Be careful though, a lot it is excessively salty so if you use bullion then you want to cut back on other sources of salt.

I forgot to mention that while bullion can be OK flavor-wise, it will not have the rich texture you get from a proper stock. That may or may no matter depending on the soup you're making.

If you do need that texture then you can use some unflavored gelatin.

though I would suggest you look into making stock. It's cheap, easy, and a great way to elevate your cooking.

>bullion
Retard.

I personally just puree vegetables, cream, herbs and seasonings together for my soups
>Potato and leek with a bit of thyme, white pepper and salt
>roasted cauliflower and caramelized onion with salt, black pepper, butter, cream and a bit of chicken stock
to name a couple

I used to make a creamed spinach soup with oxtales

A few things I've learned:
blending up about 1/3 of your soup when its done and adding it back in makes it much better

Browning something beforehand, be it onions, stock bones, vegetables, before adding it to the soup gives it more depth. There are very few cases where browning the meat beforehand is a bad idea.

Adding a small amount of acid, like vinegar or lemon, at the end can really help separate flavors.

Finishing herbs like chopped parsley, holy basil, or whatever goes with what you're cooking adds a fresh taste and nice color.

>it will not have the rich texture you get from a proper stock.

Watch your mouth

BOUILLON

You need a monkey first
And then you know the rest :^)

If you have a million bouillon cubes does that make you a bouillonaire

texture and salt

Is gumbo soup?

GTFO

Yeah, though I'd put it in the stew category.

>it will not have the rich texture you get from a proper stock

Can try adding plain gelatin if you have it on hand.

is it okay to store stock at room temperature? I know that canned broth etc at the store is at room temp

I said that exact thing in the post you just replied to.

Your reading comprehension is atrocious.

If it was commerically canned, yes. Otherwise absolutely not. Stock is an ideal growth medium for bacteria. That's what scientists used to use for cultures before agar culture medium was invented. It goes bad fast even in the refrigerator.

If you want to store stock long term then you either need to freeze it, or you need to pressure can it.

i feel like creating random soups comes down to pretty much just one thing, the stock.
obviously the flavour combinations need to be good too but if you have shitty stock, it won't be a good soup.