Things you learned the hard way

[jame_alec]

Finally, after three tries of soup making and only now getting one that's good, I thought it might be fun to share things we've learned the hard way.

Some of mine:

Bags of frozen mixed vegetables are not precooked. If you dump these in your soup at the end to allow them to thaw, you will have very crunchy soup.

You cannot freeze soup with pasta in it. It will all be mush when you thaw it.

I have to say, though, learning it the hard way has ensured I will never forget it!

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Freezing something with potato chunks in it will make the potatoes have a weird texture when thawed, because of the ice crystals. I suppose flash-frozen stuff doesn't have that problem so much, but oh, I hate that texture. Potatoes that are already the consistency of mashed, no problems. Chunks, problems.

Do not, for the love of all that is holy, blend the tuna salad. EWWWW.

[jld]

Bags of frozen mixed vegetables are not precooked. If you dump these in your soup at the end to allow them to thaw, you will have very crunchy soup.

Contrariwise, canned vegetables (e.g., string beans) will have been sitting around in salty water at arbitrary temperatures for, um, how long has that can been hiding in the cupboard, anyway? And, thus, if put in at the beginning of cooking something, may have dissolved entirely by the end.

[afuna]

Oh man! Thank you for those tips. I've been thinking of moving on to soup (because mmmm, soup), and I'm pretty sure I would have made these mistakes :)

[jame_alec]

Soup is such a great and easy thing to make! Depending on what you do it can also be easy to mess up, though, haha. At least it's cheap so it's not like messing up steak or something, but it always makes me sad to throw away soup that's inedible.

[afuna]

I think my next project shall definitely be soup, then!

I usually do some kind of scrambled eggs, which is easy, because it's "take an egg, add anything that fits your mood, toss it into a pan, move it around for five minutes".

Soup now begins to sound like "take water, add anything that fits your mood, toss it into a pot, let it simmer for an hour" (except more *complicated, because it just seems that it should be a bit more complicated).

Anyway, I am babbling. But I wish you luck on your next batch of soup *g*

[jame_alec]

Good luck to you too! And yeah, in my experience unless you're making a specific soup like French onion, soup is more or less like that. I call it fridge soup cause it just uses whatever's in the fridge, hehe.

[pauamma]

Sounds like musgo casserole, only with soup. :-)

[pauamma]

Depending on what you put in your soup, you may get better results by letting it simmer much longer. (Or not. You'll need to experiment.)

[jame_alec]

Oh, I didn't catch this until now, but you definitely want to use BROTH, not water! ... that is also something I found out the hard way, haha. I find bouillon cubes work the best, in term of convenience, price, and taste.