I just made out menus for the next three and a half months. I'm trying to get my calories and finances under control. Before it gets any worse. 🙄

Here are the stews/soups I have on the menu:

Gumbo
Potato and leek chowder
Lamb stew
Crab bisque
Chicken and wild rice
Chipotle chicken stew

Actually, I didn't gain any weight over the holidays, but I didn't lose any either.

I just made a huge pot of tortilla soup. Sent a bunch over to my sil and her husband. Also like potato soup, chicken corn soup and chili.

Trader Joe's French Onion soup is my new obsession. Takes 4 minutes to microwave and it's delicious. I have a tiny freezer, and I take the soups out of the package so I can cram them in every corner.

Pea soup dutch style, Potato cheese soup, corn chowder, good vegetable soup and love beef stew.

It's a toss up between my gumbo and Thai chicken soup. We always have an assortment of soups in the freezer in the winter--both of those are staples.

Any kind of bean soup. Take your potato soup and add cooked broccholi and cheese and whiz it up in the blender for a Broc/cheese soup.

Basically, I like creamy soups and bread!

I pretty much just throw together soups and don't use recipes.

That crab bisque doesn't sound like a budget soup! LOL

Also, I freeze my soups in slabs. I put them in a bag, lay them flat in a baking pan, freeze, then seal. Makes it much easier to stack in the freezer.

Probably basic beef/vegetable. It's hardy and always delicious.

Yes, beef vegetable. i made a big pot the other day and im getting tired of it.

Favorite? all of them! but special mentions to good ol' Campbell's Tomato Soup (heart healthy version), especially when dressed up with a tablespoon of basil pesto. I love beef and barley soup, and green pea soup with carrots onion and ham, and chicken or turkey soup made with stock and vegetables. Stews -- delectable, any of them, but especially a basic beef stew with fluffy dumplings, or chicken & wine stew with lots of carrots. And potatoes cooked in the pot until they've taken on a dark hue and all the flavor. Gumbo? yes please, from the Southern Living recipe. Potato soup? like you I like my own version best. Mostly I love my own home-made soups and stews, but now I'm remembering the restaurant where we used to live that served wonderful soups, good or better than mine. *sigh* road trip...!

If I am in a hurry to prepare soup I use purchased broth. I sauté italian sausage removed from the casing, add canned seasoned greens, canned white beans and simmer until flavors are blended. It is really good and so quick. Usually I prepare homemade broth but in a pinch this is great.

My favorite stew is what my mother called "Mulligan" (no idea if this is authentic). Carrots (large chunks), celery (chopped), onions (wedges that come apart), new potatoes (whole but peeled), tomatoes, sliced mushrooms and peppers, garlic, herbs, any vegetables that need clearing out, vegetable juice, tomato juice, etc. I never much cared for cooked carrots--unless they were from the stew, cooked long enough to be tender through and packed with flavor.

Second favorite is a proper boeuf bourguignon, but I couldn't eat it for days on end, it's a bother to make.

Favorite soup is a vegetarian split pea soup with onions and carrots, and dill. Second favorite is roasted tomato and basil.

I love winter soups. I like cold summer ones too. Soup is a great (and traditional) first course.

Here are some winter ones I make often:

Minestrone, summer and winter variety.

Pumpkin with apple.

Carrot with ginger.

Potato and leek.

Onion

Tricolored soup, from Marcella, a potato base with carrots and celery and garlic croutons.

Avoglemono with chicken or fish.

Escarole soup.

Sausage and potato soup with kale.

Beef shank soup with carrots, celery and pastina/orzo.

Barley beef soup.

Puréed vegetable soup with Parmesan on top.

Watercress soup.

Red and yellow bell pepper soup (serve half red and half yellow in each bowl, swirl sour cream on top.)

For stews:

Beef Bourguignon

Beef Carbonnade

Chicken fricassée

Cassoulet, though not sure that counts as a stew or not.

Braised lamb shanks, almost a stew, not quite, but close enough.

Osso bucco, again, more of a braise than a stew, but kinda the same wintery category.

I forgot to add about bread. I almost never eat bread.

I do like a can of Campbell’s Tomato made with milk, and with a small can of low-sodium V-8 added. Yum. and of course a grilled cheese sandwich on the side.

I really like an easy beef stew, though. Just browned cubes of beef, carrot, celery, onion, potato, can of Campbell’s either mushroom or tomato soup, water (and maybe half a teaspoon of beef ”better than bouillon“), half a packet ot Lipton onion soup, and maybe some other veggies that need cleaning out, in the crockpot. Maybe like plllog’s Mulligan?

I LOVE bœuf bourgignon, but my ”busy day beef stew” requires less attention. And I love potato soup, and cheddar-broccoli, cream of you-name-it, etc. But, DH needs ”real food” as he says. Sigh.

I do like to make a summery soup. It’s not cold, but is a summery taste, with onion, zucchini, vâche qui rit cheese, vegetable or chicken stock/broth, salt etc. And it doesn’t simmer for long. I like it in all seasons.

I spent a summer on a homestay in France. Maman made a soup. i think it was split pea, with a dollop of crème fraîche on top. ooh la la, it was soooooo good. The crème fraîche had been a gift from a relative on a farm, soooooo good. Alas, here, even near America’s Dairyland, I wouldn’t know where to find such a delight.

Vegetable Beef soup and Guiness stew. Yum.

Today i made chicken corn chowder for lunch I had nothing with it It was hearty! i was thinking about french onion soup the other day I’ve never made it before but I don’t have small bowls I can put under the broiler

I like to make soup for lunches. i make chicken soup with left over roast chicken carcas. We like Emeril’s zucchini curry soup, and a yellow squash and carrot soup. I love beef stew for dinner, one of the few one pot dinners DH likes.

Boeuf Bourgignon tonight. Plllog, you can make it and freeze leftovers! Or make a pie. mmmmm Pies! Or add kidneys and make a steak and kidney pudding with suet pastry. Chop it up a bit and serve with noodles. Lots of options.

I love soups and stews especially since they are one pot meals and mean I won't have to cook for a couple of days! I most frequently make chicken soup, but I will also make stuffed cabbage soup, and lentil soup sometimes with ham, sometimes vegetarian. Love mulligatawny but don't make it that often for some reason. Beef stew gets cooked up in the crockpot.

Love a bowl of spicy chili with cheese on top on a cold day.

I'm a soup and stew lover! My favorite is chicken noodle soup. When cooking soups, I'll make a huge pot and freeze leftovers for future meals. On my soup list that I like making are...

Cream of Mushroom

Cream of broccoli

Lentil

Split Pea

Corn Chowder

Minestrone

Most of the time, I'll just have the soup with nothing else. On rare occasions, I'll serve

with buttered bread.

I like to have a variety of left over soups in the freezer during the winter to have for quick and easy meals. I always make at least one big pot every weekend but rarely make any during the week. As I mentioned on the snow storm thread, I made both veggie beef with barley and ham and beans yesterday. I think split pea with ham will be next as I have everything needed already.

Others soups in my rotation:

• Chicken tortilla
• Chili (with beans of course)
• Chicken with wild rice and mushrooms
• Clam Chowder with bacon bits
• French onion
• Southern style Chicken and egg noodles (not really a soup but one of my favorite comfort foods in the winter).

As far as what I eat with the soups

• Chile - oyster crackers and shredded cheese
• Chicken Tortilla soup - tortilla strips :-)
• Clam chowder, French onion - Usually Aldi's garlic bread knots
• Chicken with wild rice - corn bread
• Chicken with egg noodles - French bread or baguette

Does anybody think this is a crazy idea?

I want to make french onion soup, but I don't want to use any bread. I would prefer to leave the carbs off, plus I don't have any, and it's about to snow. Would it be crazy to use a slab of broccoli on top, for the cheese melt on? Just asking here because it's the "soup thread" 😊

Rob, I would roast the broccoli so it is a little crisp like the toasted bread. I’m not so sure I would like that combination, though. Broccoli isn’t going to soak up the broth like bread.

I despise mushy bread, come to think of it (soak made me realize it)... so I'm going for it.

I love your roasting idea, thanks ded!

I like some soups, my favorite is beef vegetable, followed by beef/barley/mushroom. I seldom use a recipe, I just make soup.

Creamy soups don't need any crackers or bread for me, although brothy soups often get a homemade dinner roll, occasionally crackers.

Elery likes chili, either with beef or chicken and it always has beans, so it's certainly not Texas style. We both like split pea soup, sometimes it has a ham bone and sometimes it's "vegetarian". Elery likes anything with beans or lentils. I like beans but lentils have a texture that I mostly don't care for. Red lentils are better than green lentils for me.

I don't like cold soups at all. No gazpacho or fruit soup or vichyssoise here. I especially don't see the point of gazpacho, just drink a glass of tomato/vegetable juice. (shrug) For some reason I have a special dislike for tortilla soup, there's something there I really don't like and I just can't put my finger on it.

I like french onion and I like broccoli, but I don't think I'd like them together. So how was it, Rob?

Annie

Always have home made soup in the freezer; chicken noodle, chicken tortilla, turkey barley, beef vegetable, split peat, ham and bean, minestrone, we really like soup!

Love soups of all kinds.....I have clam chowder, black bean soup (properly called tortilla soup, I imagine!) and chicken wild rice in the freezer now. I love chicken and dumplings, made with my mother's recipe. Other days will see potato soup, split pea, etc., etc. Could eat soup every day.

I love soup, its prob my favorite catagory of food. i often make a big pot and eat it for breakfast almost every morning.

For french onion, i make onion soup and reheat in the microwave. often i don’t put cheese on it, but usually a seperate piece of toast i use for dunking

Gumbo is definitely my favorite soup, but the way I make it is rather labor intensive, and so I do not do it very often.

Typically, I make very easy soups, such as lentil.

I bought some leeks at the farmers' market today and plan to make some sort of soup with it, but not sure what kind. It's 82° right now, and so it's really not soup weather here, and so I'll probably save them for another day. I only have a few potatoes, but I did buy them for soup - it was cool and raining when I bought them, but that weather did not last long.

I like cold vichyssoise, and so I might make that. I have some dehydrated cream I could use in it. I also like cold avocado soup and cold gazpacho, but I don't have the ingredients for those - I should have bought avocados at the farmers' market, but they were a bit expensive, even though they are in season now. I did buy some nice, huge carrots, however, and so I could make carrot soup.

Lettuce is in season here, and the lettuce I bought was huge, and so we'll probably just have salad today.

Yes, my Irish-native American sister, it is good with broccoli. But then, I don't know what's good since I don't like bread to sop up that hearty broth, spiked with caramelized goodness. I just wanted something to hold the cheese up, but honestly, there were so many onions in it, I probably could have just put the cheese on top of that. Delicious! I only tasted it, I haven't had a meal of it yet, so I look forward to it.

I have burned myself out on soup last winter. I don't know what I will eat this winter. I am alone, so I make a soup and freeze in individual portions. Then I get too lazy to cook and burn myself out on soup. I guess it will be chili with crackers, and white chicken chili with white hominy instead of beans. It has a brick of cream cheese in it, not a broth soup. And ham and beans with cornbread. I get about 8 servings out of each soup. I am following this to see if anything else appeals to me.

I love soups and stews of all kinds and make them year round. It is rarely ever too hot here for soup not to be appealing :-)

I make all different kinds....depends on my mood and what I may have at hand. Recently I've made borsch, avgolemono, minestrone and just a couple of days ago, navy bean with ham. Beef and barley sounds good so that may be next. Others that come and go are split pea, chili, tomato bisque, potato leek and one that is called 'rusty knife' - smoked sausage, white beans and spinach or kale. Since my freezer is minute, I usually share with my sister. She too is a soup maker, so I receive soup donations from her as well.

There are some soups i don't bother to make. My local grocery store makes their own soups and they are fantastic. There is usually a choice of 6 different types so they are my go-to for French onion, clam chowder and roasted squash. And I am not ashamed to admit that I prefer canned chicken soup above homemade (blasphemy!!) Except for my friend's matzo ball soup but that is a rare treat.

And I like bread of some sort with my soups and stews. Crusty rustic baguette, cornbread, garlic bread, grilled cheese, biscuits, dumplings, etc. Crackers are for cheese 😁

I'm another who loves soup and loves to make my own. My now adult kids always joke that as soon as the Fall weather begins to cool down here, it's time for me to pull out my soup tureen and start making soups. My favorites are French Onion, my Old Town Soup (a creamy chicken and green chile soup), and New Mexico's much-loved Posole. That one is a hominy, shredded pork soup with red chile, garlic, etc. To me, to us, it's absolutely delicious. It takes me two days to make it, but it's so worth it.

Last night we had dinner at a new restaurant for us in Santa Fe, Sazon. Instead of a salad, I had the house specialty soup, Sopa de Amor. They don't list any of the ingredients, just that it's the "Chef's signature soup". It was so incredibly delicious that I seriously wanted to cancel my already-ordered main dish and just get another bowl of that wonderful soup! But, my DH talked me out of it. Happily, that main dish turned out to be fab, too, though. Anyhoo, there was such a myriad of flavors in this soup, and it was impossible to pin down most of it's ingredients but, oh how I'd love to get that recipe!

Oh, LynnNM, I forgot about posole. I've never made it, but we were invited to a graduation celebration where they served posole. I can't get it out of my mind how delicious it was. The out of the ordinary for me, was they had a set up of various raw vegetables that you can choose to put into your bowl and then the soup was ladled in after that. It was super!

Yes, freezing here in NY. 6F.

What can you do to fight the freeze? FIRE!

Got a big fire going in my fire pit, and made some hot spicy BBQ ribs on the fire pit ember. That did it!

dcarch

If you like lamb, this is a favorite of ours I make year round. The recipe came from Jeff Smith (Frugal Gourmet) long ago but includes my tweaks. Have made this many many times over the years.

Lamb and Artichoke Stew

4 T. butter
2 pounds boneless lamb, cubed (I use a boneless leg; shoulder is also good)
1 medium onion, chopped
2-3 garlic cloves, chopped
1/4 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley

Salt and pepper, to taste
2 T. tomato paste
Approx. 1 1/2 to 2 cups chicken stock (or half stock/half dry white wine - such as Pinot Grigio)
2 14-oz. cans artichoke hearts in brine/water, drained (not marinated in oil)
1 T. chopped fresh dill (or 1 tsp. dried)
3 T. lemon juice

Melt butter in large pot. Season lamb cubes lightly with salt and pepper. Saute until lightly browned. Remove the meat. In same pot, saute onions along with garlic and parsley. Return meat to pot. Add salt, pepper, tomato paste and stock/wine. Simmer, covered, for about an hour or until lamb is very tender (lamb shoulder could take longer). Add artichokes, dill and lemon juice. Simmer for about another 20 minutes. Taste for seasoning. Good over rice or pilaf.

I forgot that I took a picture of the cowboy stew. I sent it to SO to let him know it was ready and to come get bowls for himself and the men pouring the giant concrete slab he was fiddling with all day in the cold....

Pro tip: Make your stew in a PINK Dutch oven. Makes it taste better.

It's actually easier to say what soups I don't like: anything with okra; and I am not that fond of canned lentil (but, I definitely put lentils in my multi-bean soups.)

I most frequently make chicken broth/stock based, mixed vegetable soups, usually pureed in my nutribullet. I will make a bean or pea soup about once a month in winter.

I will also make vegetable, but with a can of cream soup (mushroom or chicken) as the base. I will use canned cream type soups dressed up to make fish chowders - or use potato to thicken a broth base if I want to take the time - and add some bacon or sausage.

Frozen bags of various vegetable blends are primary ingredients of my soups, along with a variety of leafy greens. I cook and freeze pumpkin in the fall for soup and stew use, also (pumpkin/chicken/veg with jerk seasoning is a favorite).

Variations on spicing depends on my mood. My last soup was spicy with Zanzibar chili spice blend.

ETA: my mini key lime tree is ripening fruit, and right now I have a dozen +. I don't want to make a sweet dessert, so I am going to look for a lime soup that I remember having at a little roadside restaurant up in northern CA, near Mendocino IIRC. I think that fresh oregano was involved.

That looks good, amylou, and of course a pink dutch oven would make it better. Pink is a "warm" color, keeps the soup warm longer, right?

Annie

Chloe, thank you for the lamb recipe. It looks delicious. I was thinking of making Shepherd's Pie, will do this instead.

Rob, I consider both the crouton and the cheese to be "accessory" or "garnish" to onion soup. I often omit them. :) Also, if the cheese is wanted for richness, you can just drop some grated cheese in the soup and it'll melt without needing to broil it. Or you can substitute a little sour cream or creme fraiche. And, yes, you can also float a thick slice of cheese and broil without the crouton. Your broccoli sounds good if it's broken into spoonable pieces. You could make any kind of roasted veg into a crouton. I think big (diagonal) slices of horse carrot (super big woody kind) might be awesome. Pre-roasted so it's tender through. Or you could use a slice of onion...

I had a 3-day disaster making boiled corned beef and oven pastrami. Tasted like nothing except peppercorns. So much time and money wasted, mostly time. I could've cooked a whole lot more food in that time and at the same cost -- let alone increased the nutritional value substantially. I will forever more go to the deli for corned beef and pastrami.

Before dropping a jar of honey on my foot and probably breaking my toe, I bought chicken, beef stew meat and a salmon steak to get us through this chilly week (Florida).

I do not like broccoli at all and would never put it in onion soup. I would skip the bread and use a slice of cheese and it will float and melt. Delicious. I really don't like the soggy bread.

I could never acquire a taste for lentils or other beans. I do like baked beans and black bean soup. But lentils or kidney beans I stay away from. I like to make a beef vegetable stew with tons of vegetables. I love chicken stew with dumplings.

Nancyofnc, I bet that was a super expensive no fun few days for you- been there, done that- yuk :-)

Jane, I hope your foot heals well and quickly.

My name is BB and I’m a soupaholic. I love almost all soups. When I was little, I wanted Campbell’s Alphabet Soup for breakfast every morning.

I braised a sirloin roast this weekend. It will be made into Vegetable Soup, which is really more stew-like when I make it. I don’t have a recipe; I have a template: some sort of meat, preferable leftover roast and gravy, a couple of cans of tomatoes, vegetables (fresh, frozen, or mustgo), and mirepoix cooked for a couple of hours. Thirty minutes or so before serving, add corn kernels (frozen, or canned) and baby lima beans (frozen). Serve with hot cornbread (no sugar!!)

I also made a recipe that is call The Best Slow Cooker Beef Stew. I compared recipes. It is basically, Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon but made in a crockpot. The recipe calls for thickening the stew with a cornstarch slurry. I thickened it with beurre manie. It was so easy. I dislike the mouth-feel of things thickened with cornstarch.

I also make:

Seafood Gumbo. The base w/o shrimp or other seafood can be made ahead and frozen. When heating up the base, add the seafood toward the end so that it is barely cooked. @Lars, mine takes HOURS to make when done properly, but over the years, I’ve developed a bastardized version using Tony Cachere’s Roux Mix, frozen seasoning blend, and a quick shrimp stock made with shrimp shells, celery trimmings, and onion peels. I supplement it with clam juice, if necessary.

Chicken and Sausage Gumbo

Alton Brown’s Cheddar Cheese Soup

Chicken Taco Soup

Kale and Quinoa Minestrone

Robert St. John’s Mushroom Bechamel Sauce, which is just a really good mushroom soup.

@Zalco/bring back Sophie!, Dorie Greenspan has a delicious Mediterranean Shepherd’s Pie https://foodschmooze.org/recipe/dorie-greenspans-mediterranean-shepherds-pie/. Full disclosure, I dial back the heat a lot. I also substitue spinach for the kale.

Thank you, BB. I will look into that recipe. I am not much into spicy myself. Pepper and garlic are the apogees of spiciness in my family ;-)

bbstx, I do the same when making seafood gumbo (which is the only kind I make); i.e., I make the base without the seafood and freeze that separately so that I can add the seafood in only when I reheat the gumbo, especially the shrimp and oysters. I'm okay with adding crab earlier and freezing that with the base.

Because of the time it takes to make gumbo, I make large batches and freeze it in multiple containers that each contain the amount I want to use at one time.

Once I made a large batch of minestrone for my mother, and I also froze that in multiple containers for her to reheat later. She had a large stand-up freezer, and it always had space in it.

For myself, I do not freeze any soup except for gumbo, as it is too easy to make the others.

It's freezing outside! 21F. I made sloppy joes with ground chicken, put beef boullion in it to make it taste good...no...I really did...and instead of serving it hot over buns(for hubby it's ok, he's trying to keep weight on)...I served it over a bed of fresh spinach leaves topped with plain Greek yogurt. It's low cal...and healthy on a cold day. :0) I like a bowl of soup, a whole pot is too much. ♥