How to Make Homemade Soup - A DIY Guide

How to Make Homemade Soup – A DIY Guide | Follow this handy guide for making homemade soup. We'll learn how to get a soup started, we'll talk about different flavor combinations, and we'll use our creativity to make soup with what we have in our pantry.

How to Make Homemade Soup - A DIY Guide

My goal with this website is to teach you how to make healthy, homemade food that's:

• easy to shop for
• easy to cook

And yes, sometimes there are treats, but life is like that right? Sometimes we want a decadent dessert, and sometimes we want delectable little appetizers for a game day or dinner party. I just think it's healthier and more fun to make these things myself. And that's why I share them with you, to help you make them too.

I find that the thing that helps me the most in the kitchen is having a template, guide or simple ratio to get started. I use this idea of starting with a template in bread-making, cookie baking, and making homemade soup. It's helpful to have a starting point.

How to Use a Template for Making Soup

So, for example, to apply the idea of using a template to bread-making, I think about my ingredients and the method. So:

x amount of flour to x amount of water + mixing, kneading rising and then baking = a loaf of bread.

To apply this idea to cookies, I start with what I know:

x amount of flour to x amount of fat to x amount of sugar = cookies

So to start off I use these templates or ratios, and then I can play around with those ingredients, the amounts, and the cooking methods, depending on the outcome I want.

So, I could add herbs to the bread template and it will yield different but reliable results. I could add chocolate chips or brown sugar to the cookie template and again it will yield different but reliable results pretty much every time.

The same goes with making homemade soup!

Common ingredients + the cooking method = great soup

So using this idea we can come up with:

mirepoix + tomato sauce + pasta + boiling = minestrone soup

broccoli + a creamy cheese sauce + blending = broccoli cheese soup

*mirepoix is a mix of diced carrot, celery, and onion.

What is in this guide?

The following is a little guide with a bit more information on each component of soup. You can use it to make any kind of soup you want to. Soup is forgiving and the guide is some of the ideas and process I follow, basically how I use my own template for soup.

For example, I almost always start off with cooking onions in oil. And then I add and cook the vegetables, stock, spices or herbs and any other extras like beans or pasta. Then I season, garnish and serve.

You can do the same in so many different combinations. You can decide to make your soup:

• brothy or creamy
• chunky or pureed
• with meat or vegetarian

So by following the idea that:

Common ingredients + the cooking method = great soup

We can also add in some extra ingredients and come up with the following combinations:

Onions + beef + tomato sauce and stock + chili and cumin + corn + tortillas = tortilla soup

Onions + mushrooms + stock and cream + dill and paprika = Hungarian mushroom soup

Enjoy the guide. I've made a free printable that you can download at the end of the post. Read on for more information on ingredients, the template and then cooking methods.

How to make homemade soup

When I make soup I usually like to make a big pot, about 6-8 servings. I use my 5 qt or 7 qt enameled cast iron dutch oven by Cuisinart, both of which I love, and a simple wooden spoon. (Not sponsored, I bought them myself and I just really love them) Sometimes I use a whisk if I'm making a creamy soup with butter and flour. I also use an immersion blender a lot. You don't need anything fancy to make soup at home.

Ingredients

Choose a Fat

2-3 tablespoons. You'll need to choose a fat to saute your vegetables and flavor starters in. I usually use oil. For creamy soups, sometimes I'll use butter and for coconut-based soups like Thai soups, I like to use coconut oil.

Aromatics

3-4 cups. Onions, shallots, leeks, garlic, carrot, celery, classic mirepoix, Italian soffrito or Asian style shallots and ginger. Use whatever fits your dish or whatever you have in your freezer/pantry. Note: 3-4 cups seems like a lot for aromatics, but that's because I always include my mirepoix here. I almost always cook that before adding any other vegetables. This is why I count vegetables as its own category.

Vegetables

2-3 cups. Use whatever you like and whatever matches your dish! Some ideas are zucchini, bell peppers, peas, green beans, greens like kale or spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, potatoes, turnip, sweet potatoes. Remember that vegetables like root vegetables take longer to cook (15-20 minutes) than items like peas (3 minutes), so stagger the timing when adding these in.

Base Liquid

6-8 cups. Chicken stock, beef stock, vegetable stock, water, tomato sauce, coconut milk, milk or a combination.

Meat, if using

1-2 lbs Chicken breast or thighs, sausage, beef, shrimp, whatever you want. Cook this right after the aromatics and vegetables, and cook it fully. Except for shrimp - I usually add shrimp at the end because it doesn't take long to cook in hot liquid.

Extras

Pasta, rice, beans. For pasta and rice, only add between ½ cup to ¾ cups, depending on how much liquid you're using. Pasta and rice can absorb a lot of liquid during and even after cooking. If you find they've absorbed more liquid than you thought, simply add some more or your base liquid and heat through before serving.

When adding beans, I usually add 1 or 2 cans, again depending on how much liquid I'm using. Add the beans and then continue cooking so that the beans are heated through and softened, about 10 minutes or so.

Flavor Boosters

• tomato paste
• spices and herbs
• fish sauce
• soy sauce
• sesame oil
• miso paste (don't boil)
• lime juice

Add things like tomato paste, spices and herbs, fish sauce and soy sauce early in the cooking process, once the vegetables are cooked and before adding the base liquid. Add ingredients like sesame oil, miso paste and lime juice at the end, before serving.

Seasoning

Salt and pepper. Taste and season your soup throughout the cooking process and especially before serving.

Garnish

Choose a garnish or two that match the rest of your dish.

Some ideas are:

• chopped peanuts
• shredded cheese
• sliced or diced avocado
• nuts or seeds
• fresh herbs
• crouton
• drizzle of oil
• yogurt or sour cream

Homemade Soup Template Example

So our template could look like this:

• 2-3 tablespoons fat
• 3-4 cups aromatics
• 2-3 cups vegetables
• 1-2 lbs meat
• 6-8 cups liquid
• ½ -¾ cups extras
• 1-2 teaspoons flavor boosters
• salt and pepper
• garnish, as fitting

That's a basic template for a brothy soup. For a creamy soup, you'd add 2-4 tablespoons each of butter and flour. For a blended soup, you'd puree it. Read below to learn how to take this template and add a cooking method for each of these three types of soup: broth-based, blended, and creamy.

How to Make Homemade Soup: Cooking Methods for Soup

So now that you've read about ingredients and decided what you're using, let's go through the process of making broth-based soup.

Broth Based Soup Cooking Method

1. Heat fat in a large pot, over medium.
2. Add aromatics and cook for a few minutes.
3. Add vegetables and cook for a few minutes.
4. Add meat, if using, and cook fully.
5. Add garlic, if using, and cook for a minute, stirring.
6. Add any spices or dried herbs, cook for a minute.
7. Add base liquid.
8. Bring to boil.
9. Add extras.
10. Simmer to cook extras.
11. Add any flavor boosters.
12. Season with salt and pepper.
13. Garnish.
14. Serve.

That's my basic process for making an easy soup. So what would this look like for a broth-based soup that we know, like a chicken noodle soup?

1. Heat cooking oil in a large pot, over medium.
2. Add onions, carrot, celery and cook for a few minutes.
3. Add any other vegetables you want and cook for a few minutes.
4. Add chicken and cook fully.
5. Add garlic, if using, and cook for a minute, stirring.
6. Add ground sage and ground thyme, cook for a minute.
7. Add chicken stock.
8. Bring to boil.
9. Add pasta.
10. Simmer to cook pasta.
11. Add any flavor boosters.
12. Season with salt and pepper.
13. Garnish with fresh herbs.
14. Serve.

You'll notice we didn't use every step. Sometimes you don't need to. For this chicken noodle soup, I didn't use any extra flavor boosters. Sometimes you won't have any extras to add in, for example, if you're making a vegetable soup.

Sometimes you won't add meat and sometimes you may not want to garnish. It's all good. Soup is flexible. Feel free to change up the amounts of anything that I include in my template when you're making your own soup. Change it up based on the look and taste.

Blended Soup Cooking Method

1. Heat fat in a large pot, over medium.
2. Add aromatics and cook for a few minutes.
3. Add vegetables and cook for a few minutes.
4. Add garlic, if using, and cook for a minute, stirring.
5. Add extras.
6. Add any spices or dried herbs, cook for a minute.
7. Add base liquid.
8. Bring to boil.
9. Simmer to cook extras.
10. Blend.
11. Reheat over low to add milk or cream.
12. Season with salt and pepper
13. Garnish.
14. Serve.

Creamy Soup Cooking Method

1. Heat oil in a large pot, over medium.
2. Add aromatics and cook for a few minutes.
3. Add vegetables and cook for a few minutes.
4. Add meat, if using, and cook fully.
5. Add any spices or dried herbs, cook for a minute.
6. Add butter and flour (3-4 tablespoons of each). Melt the butter then add the flour and whisk together, cooking for a minute or two.
7. Add base liquid. (Stock, milk or combination of.)
8. Bring to boil.
9. Add any extras.
10. Simmer to cook extras.
11. Season with salt and pepper
12. Let cool for a minute. Soup with thicken as it cools.
13. Garnish.
14. Serve.

Check out the Free Printable for the detailed instructions on making creamy soups and blended soups with example recipes.

Extra Tips + Tricks for Homemade Soup

Bite-sized! No wants to try to bite a large piece of steaming hot broccoli off of a spoon that's loaded with boiling hot soup. Stick to bite-sized when chopping.

Get ready! Chop and measure before you even turn on the stove. You don't want to burn the garlic while you're measuring something else.

Taste and season throughout!

How to Store Soup

Cool hot soup to room temperature, about 1 ½ – 2 hours. Refrigerate up to 3-5 days, freeze up to a month or two.

Note: I don't freeze soup with noodles or dairy. I haven't had success with it.

And that's the end of the guide. Thanks for reading. If you didn't time to read then either save it to Pinterest for later or print it using the link below.

Click on this link to get your How to Make Homemade Soup: A DIY Guide Free Printable.