Cozy Winter Soup
Cozy Winter Soup
By Chadwick Boyd
PHOTO BY BROOKE SLEZAK
A Quick, Flavorful, Whole Ingredient Soup to Enjoy While It’s Cold
This was the second soup I ever mastered as a young, budding chef (early teens)…next to quick chicken corn soup. It’s the kind of soup you crave when it’s cold outside and you want to cozy up. I would argue, though, it is great any time of year because I make it all year round.
I first discovered this recipe when our family got a Sharp Carousel Microwave in the late 1980s. Barbara Kafka was “the” champion for microwave cooking then (she wrote the ground-breaking cookbook, “Microwave Gourmet”), and the Sharp Carousel Convection came with one of Barbara’s recipe booklets. Ground turkey was first arriving in grocery stores then, too.
I was drawn to how quickly you could make homemade soup in the microwave with fresh, whole ingredients in Barbara’s recipe. The idea of learning how to cook ground turkey instead of the ground beef and make an entire soup all in this quick-cooking machine was intriguing. After a few tries, I mastered Autumn Soup (ground turkey, too), and it became a staple in our regular family dinner rotation all throughout the year.
I still make the soup, though I no longer cook it in the microwave. It comes together on the stove top quickly with just a few steps, and it is just as flavorful. The broth is rich and tomatoey, and the soup overall is very fresh and quite filling. The addition of a heaping handful of tender, pungent celery leaves thrown in at the end punches up the onion, potato and carrot, and rounds out the soup. Serve with chunks of baguette or other warm, hearty fresh bread.
Chadwick’s Checklist
What you need to know before you cook.
- Make sure to cook the turkey just until it loses its pink color
- This soup can be made a day or two before serving. Store it in an air-tight container for up to 1 week or freeze it for up to 3 months.
- If you don't have diced canned tomatoes on hand, use whole peeled tomatoes. Just place them in a bowl and squeeze them with your hands to break them apart. Put all the juice along with the tomatoes in the soup pot.
- To make this soup vegetarian/vegan, use ground tofu and vegetable stock
Serves: 6-8 Prep Time: 5 minutes Cooking Time: 25-30 minutes
Ingredients
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound ground turkey or beef
1 cup chopped sweet onion
1 cup chopped celery + ⅓ cup celery leaves
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2 cups ½-inch potato cubes
1 cup thinly sliced carrots
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon dried basil leaves
¼ teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
1 bay leaf
Directions
Add the olive oil to a 4-quart pot and heat 1-2 minutes on medium-high. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute to soften. Add the ground turkey, onion and celery and continue cooking until the ground turkey loses its pink color and the vegetables are tender, about 5 to 7 minutes. Stir occasionally with a wooden spoon.
Place the potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, salt, basil, pepper and bay leaf in the pot. Stir to combine. Pour in the broth. Stir again. Cover loosely.
Cook 10 minutes, then turn the heat down to medium to simmer. Continue cooking another 15-20 minutes until the potatoes are tender.
Serve.
Chadwick’s Changeups
Switch things up. Have some fun! Do more.
- Green it up! Stir in fresh or frozen spinach...even kale or mustard greens.
- Sometimes to cheat, I use a large bag of frozen peas, carrots, and corn instead of the fresh carrots.
- Pearl onions are a nice swap for the sweet onion
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