Did you know that there are different kinds of ingredients used to make soups? You simply boil the ingredients together with water, add in seasoning (you usually don't have to if you use enough good ingredients), and it becomes soup. Soups can be essentially categorized into the following 5 categories :
1. Clear Soup
2. Stock
3. Chowder
4. Thick Soup
5. Sweet Soup
CLEAR SOUP
Clear soup is light and clear. As preparation only takes a few minutes, the full flavor of the soup is not achieved in the process. Therefore, clear soups require extra ingredients, or mixed with stock, to taste better. Vegetable bean curd soup and egg are examples of clear soups.
STOCK
Stock is a flavoured liquid. Stock is prepared by simmering various ingredients in water, including pig bones, chicken bones and fish bones.
CHOWDER
Chowder is thick soup made from stock, enriched with different ingredients and thickened with flour. It then turns into thick soup and named as chowder, such as corn chowder.
THICK SOUP
Thick soup is thickened with corn flour and is slightly different from chowder. To make thick soup, all ingredients should be chopped finely. Otherwise, it will take more time to soften the ingredients so that they do not stick together, these include seafood and meat based thick soups.
SWEET SOUP
Sweet soup, also known as tong shui, is a sweer cantonese soup or warm custard served as a dessert at the end of a meal. There are various types of sweet soups, such as red bean soup, green bean soup, black sesame soup, etc.
Having said all these, my concentration is on soups, be it clear, stock, chowder, thick or sweet, that are nourishing to the well....ahem...soul. Therefore, all soups tried out at a later stage will only use one electrical 'machine', the SLOW COOKER. ;-)
Introduction extracted from The World of Nourishing & Fine Soups
No comments:
Post a Comment