Spring soups: prepare ahead of time & freeze

[MelissaH]

It looks as though I'm going to be repeating my brief personal chef gig for my friends in Rochester, NY. They're a couple about my parents' age, and both are mostly omnivores. She likes to eat but is allergic to eggplant and shellfish and isn't fond of the texture of mushrooms; he is the main cook in the house but is once again too injured to do so. If possible, it's best to keep the salt content down. They both love soups, which are easy for a non-cook to reheat and can be easily made into a complete meal with things you can buy at the supermarket such as crackers or bread and salad or fruit or cheese. This spring has been cool and wet (enough that many of the area beaches on Lake Ontario are under water and possibly destroyed, although we won't know for sure until the water recedes) so soup is actually a pretty good option.

 

They love (and have requested) my corn chowder (which is really the Serious Eats corn chowder) but it's about two months away from corn season here, and this soup isn't worth making without good local corn. I really hope he isn't incapacitated that long, but I fear that may be the case. And if it happens, come late July or August, I'll be making at least a triple batch to parcel and freeze for them. If there's still an issue then, I'll also bring a batch of gazpacho because when there's local corn, there's local tomatoes.

 

Thus, I'm looking for other soup ideas that might be good. Specifically, I'd like things that I can prep at home, and then cool, vacuum seal into single- or double-serving bags, and freeze. That way, I can spend my time with them being useful in other ways (I've been known to shuttle stuff in and out of the attic, scoop cat litter boxes that are up three flights of stairs, scrub floors, and shovel snow), rather than cooking. Anything that uses seasonal produce (right now we're getting local asparagus!) is good, but I'm open to other options. Anything that resembles the days-ago-overcooked vegetable mush he was served for a week in a Florence hospital need not apply. I have an Instant Pot, a Vitamix, two Anovas, and a chamber sealer, if that makes any difference. My plan is to try to cook and package something each day, and deliver it all on Sunday along with something that isn't soup and is meant to be eaten that day. (That something else may be something like a curry chicken salad or a white gazpacho, since it's actually supposed to warm up a bit by then, or maybe I'll bring the sandwich grill and we'll do panini-style sandwiches).

 

I'm thinking that one possiblity is the pressure cooker broccoli soup from Modernist Cuisine (the one that's basically broccoli and water with a touch of baking soda), since that is easy, can be done well ahead of time and frozen (although its color fades in the reheating), and is really easy to garnish (I like cheddar goldfish crackers) but also works served with grilled cheese sandwiches (which they can currently manage to make). Chicken soup is also a no-brainer, and my favorite starch kludges on that are to buy a container of rice from your local Asian restaurant and add it to the soup as you reheat it, or to put a package worth of cheap ramen noodles (no seasoning pack) in your soup bowl, pour over boiling water to cover, wait 3 minutes, drain them, and add your soup to the prewarmed bowl with noodles. Food52 also has a coconut red lentil dal that freezes and reheats well, and goes well with rice (either home-cooked or from a restaurant). I've done Rick Bayless's butternut squash soup in the past, but that feels distinctly autumnal to me. Ordinarily I'd do a batch of tomato-mushroom bisque (our recipe comes from the cookbook CooperSmith's brewpub in Ft. Collins, CO put out several years ago to mark their 10th anniversary, and makes a gallon!) but the mushrooms make that a no-go and the soup really doesn't work as well without them.

 

Suggestions, please!

[ElsieD]

I have a great recipe for a thyme carrot soup which is a creamed soup.  I have had it for 30 + years and I think I got it from Gourmet magazine but I can't be sure.   I searched the Epicurious site but it doesn't show up there. If you are interested in this, let me know.

Edited June 6, 2017 by ElsieD
Fixed a typo (log)

[kayb]

One of my favorite hearty soups, and it freezes wonderfully, is vegetable beef. I generally make mine with the remnants of pot roast, and home-canned tomatoes, but grocery store stew beef and canned tomatoes and frozen veggies work  adequately.

 

Tomato bisque is always wonderful, as is French onion soup. Both freeze pretty well. I've frozen tomato bisque prior to adding the cream, and just added that at the thaw-and-reheat stage.

 

 

[suzilightning]

I second tomato bisque or tomato rice soup and vegetable beef(I picked up 1/2 pound of store roasted beef yesterday to make some as it is cool and funky here).  How about a spring minestrone with some of the asparagus and peas? 

[FeChef]

Don't freeze any soups with potato. I learned the hard way.

[chromedome]

On 2017-6-6 at 2:08 PM, FeChef said:

Don't freeze any soups with potato. I learned the hard way.

 

Ditto. 

 

I *do* make and freeze those soups, mind you, but w/o the potatoes. I cook those separately when I take the soup out of the freezer, and combine them at the end. 

[FeChef]

10 hours ago, chromedome said:

 

Ditto. 

 

I *do* make and freeze those soups, mind you, but w/o the potatoes. I cook those separately when I take the soup out of the freezer, and combine them at the end. 

Yeah i suppose you can do that if you have par boiled potatoes on hand. I usually don't plan soups ahead of time. Almost always a day to day thing.

Ironically, why do frozen french fries turn out so good.

[chromedome]

I don't usually have par-cooked potatoes on hand. I start the potatoes when I decide on soup, then pull a container or two of the corresponding soup out of the freezer. Nuke it enough for the soup to come out of the container, then drop it in a pot on the stove to finish reheating. If you dice your potatoes to spoon size, they'll cook in about the length of time needed for the soup to reheat. If I'm on the ball I'll start a bit early so I can drain the potatoes and add them to the soup to finish cooking and absorb some of the flavor, but often I just don't bother. 

 

[MelissaH]

Thanks, all, for your help.

 

I wound up making batches of broccoli puree (either to use as a pasta sauce or to thin and eat as soup), tomato bisque sans mushrooms, red lentil coconut dal, and corn soup with the available corn augmented with a bit of frozen. My husband also made a batch of his Belgian beef stew. And for lunch, I did lentil salad, which we ate with bread. Everything was well and gratefully received.

 

Now, we just need soup weather to return!