Soup

My Most Popular Soup Recipe Was Also My Most Disliked—Until Now

A chronicle of the journey that led me to 'redo stew.'

November 11, 2021
Photo by Julia Gartland

Once upon a time, I wrote a weekly column here, a project called “Twenty-Dollar, Twenty-Minute Meals.” It was a catchy idea in support of my first cookbook that inspired me to consider whole food grocery products—cans of beans, cartons of stock, jars of sauce—as shortcuts to flavor and cooking time. The column stretched my imagination of where real food can come from, like an enormous feature in a magazine I had grown accustomed to writing. Since then, my projects since have been more personal and focused on storytelling, but creativity and good home cooking remain at the center of all I do.

Now, eight years later, I am known as “Soup Lady” first and “Caroline” second among some of my friends, which is an accurate depiction of my identity, if you ask my husband. I have fallen into a life where I make an absolutely ridiculous amount of soup every week for nine months of every year—the rainy months in Seattle, referred to as “soup season” in my house, where “souping” is also a verb—for the past three years. (As you read this, I’ve just started my fourth.) I don’t want to digress too much, but suffice it to say that this soup-obsessed life found me and my ties to it are profound and emotional. I am not exaggerating when I say I believe it saved my life.

So, that I have an ancient (as far as the digital world is concerned) soup recipe floating around on this very site that is both popular and very much disliked makes the soup lady in me deeply uncomfortable. Incidentally, the recipe as I originally conceived it defies what I’ve learned from all of my years of souping. So I set out on a grand mission: to create a "redo stew" that would surpass the community's expectations—and, more importantly, my own.

Upon examining Soup V1 with my new lens, the first thing I noticed was the broth, a dead giveaway that this recipe was written by my soup-rookie self. I categorically do not use broth in my soup anymore, despite having believed for years it was a rule that required following in order to make the result most delicious. I decided to simply try breaking this rule in order to maintain my sanity, after only once making a kiddie pool’s worth of broth only to return it to the very same pots as an ingredient in soup. Infuriated by the volume of dishwashing, I vowed that day I would never make soup in order to make soup again. (I haven’t.) What I learned in giving up broth was that there were so many more ways to build flavor in a soup, ways that effectively allowed me to have more control over the brew that resulted, ways that allowed the flavor of the vegetables to really sing. (Cue Soup Lady and control-freak Caroline high five here.)

Next, I gathered a few tricks from the arsenal I developed while writing down my soup club recipes for its cookbook: I included nutritional yeast (a funky favorite, my new “rule” in building savory vegan flavor), pulled the sage-salt method and the pinch of fresh nutmeg from my Thanksgiving soup, swapped canned beans for dried for better texture, and added lemon juice to finish. I fluently wrote the recipe for the Instant Pot, as I'd done for every stovetop recipe in my book, and finally it looked like a recipe I’d recognize among the pages of my new cookbook, Soup Club.

Join The Conversation

Top Comment:
“Very curious to try this new and apparently improved version, never having made the original. However, I may be in the minority of people that don’t own an Instant Pot. Or not, who knows, I’m just not interested in getting one. Any tips on how you would make this the old fashioned way on a stovetop? My first instinct is to use canned chick peas that have been drained and rinsed, then simmer until the pasta is cooked and the liquid reduces to a nice consistency. ”
— Melissa H.
Comment

The soup, still speedy but now vegan, came from almost the same ingredients but I knew it was different. Because I was different. I am the Soup Lady, now, after all.

Caroline’s cookbook, Soup Club, was published by Andrews McMeel on November 9, 2021 and is available wherever books are sold.
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See what other Food52 readers are saying.

  • jo
    jo
  • Steven Williamson
    Steven Williamson
  • Melissa H
    Melissa H
  • Caroline Wright
    Caroline Wright
Before her diagnosis, Caroline wrote a book on cakes called Cake Magic!. She started developing a birthday cake using her gluten-free mix found in that book. Check out other recipes she’s developing for her new life—and the stories behind them—on her blog, The Wright Recipes. Her next book, Soup Club, is a collection of recipes she made for her underground soup club of vegan and grain-free soups she delivers every week to friends throughout Seattle's rainy winter.

4 Comments

jo December 1, 2021
As a devoted and loyal Soup Club member, I can truthfully say that I've never met a Caroline soup that i didn't love :)
 
Steven W. November 12, 2021
Well, if it's hated, one might assume those people don't like chick peas?
 
Melissa H. November 11, 2021
Very curious to try this new and apparently improved version, never having made the original. However, I may be in the minority of people that don’t own an Instant Pot. Or not, who knows, I’m just not interested in getting one. Any tips on how you would make this the old fashioned way on a stovetop? My first instinct is to use canned chick peas that have been drained and rinsed, then simmer until the pasta is cooked and the liquid reduces to a nice consistency.
 
Caroline W. November 12, 2021
Hi Melissa -- you're exactly right! Canned beans in the way you mentioned would would definitely do the trick. Let me know how it goes!