Extraordinary Soup

“Cook was in the kitchen. She was bent over the stove. She was stirring something. Was it a sauce? No. Was it a stew? No. What Cook was stirring was…soup. Soup, reader! In the king’s own castle, against the king’s law, right under the king’s very nose, Cook was making soup!”

It’s so simple, really, you won’t believe it.

Take an ordinary, boring can of store-bought soup.

It will be bland as all get-out and will need souping up. That is what I’m here to do.

(Trust me on this one. You can do wonders with a carton of cream.)

(You could, technically, leave out one or more of these ingredients, but I cannot, in that case, be held responsible for the results.)

Now do this:

• Chop up some onion and a bit of garlic. Yes, this a fussy step, but the chopping can be therapeutic. Also, do your kids complain when you cook with onion? It’s time, my friend, to toughen them up!

• Sauté the onion & garlic in a bit of olive oil and butter—the olive oil because it’s heart-healthy and the butter because it’s yum.

• Add your soup—as many cans as will feed your crew. Bulk it up by adding beef broth. Those ready-made boxes of broth are the best! Does anyone even make their own beef broth these days? Chicken broth is another story, because it’s so easy to make using the picked-over carcass from a rotisserie chicken. But that’s another post for another (winter) day.

• Season your soup as you see fit. Myself, I am in love with white pepper, though I know certain of you do not agree. We’ve agreed to disagree, haven’t we? We can be grown-ups. We won’t fight.

• And now here’s the clincher: Pour in a generous amount of heavy whipping cream. Please. Do it for me; do it for your family; do it for your Vitamin-D-deprived self.

• Grab some bread, a bit of butter.

• Smile to yourself and think of spring.

Hey everybody, it’s the weekend! You can bet I’m making soup today.