How to Make Vegetable Soup 10x Better, According to My Chef-Husband
When it comes to soup season, I'm a creamy soup girly through and through. Creamy tomato bisque, cheesy broccoli cheddar, silky butternut squash, New England clam chowder so thick a spoon stands straight up in the middle—the true sign of a great chowder I once learned. Basically, anything that involves heavy cream, I'm in.
So, when my chef-husband Luke proposed a hearty vegetable soup for dinner recently, my response was pretty much, "Meh, ok." Unless tortellini is floating around those veggies—and cream—I'm not easily impressed.
He promised his version would change my mind, however, so I begrudged. Here's what happened when I followed him into the kitchen to make me the best-ever vegetable soup.
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How to Make Vegetable Soup 10X Better
Luke's secret weapon to superior veggie soup? Superior vegetables. We happened to be on a fishing trip a few days earlier, where he set up his chef Francis Mallmann-approved plancha outside to grill steak and veggies after a morning of fly fishing.
His favorite Argentine chef travels with a portable grill and chapa and apparently, so does Luke these days. Only his is a smaller version of Mallmann's.
Luke had also brought a bundle of sweet garleeks to grill from his restaurant Elm. This newish veg was the brainchild of Row 7 seed founder, master chef Dan Barber and allium breeder Hans Bongersback, who spent 10 years developing the leek-garlic hybrid before it won one of Time magazine's Best Inventions in 2023.
Sweet like leeks and pungent like garlic, they're insanely tasty when charred over an open flame and that's exactly what Luke did with them on his chapa. He did the same with heirloom Kyoto carrots, cabbage, honeynut squash and some fingerling potatoes.
"These will be delicious in a vegetable soup later," he told me at the time, referring to his wood-fired veggies.
Back home, he pulled out the leftover vegetables, along with a bag of Minnesota wild rice and chicken stock and got to work on his soup.
First, he added the rice to our rice cooker and set it to a mixed setting. "Wild rice doesn't over-absorb broth like white rice," he tells me when I ask him about his preferred soup grain. "It stays sturdy in the soup and I like the texture; it just has to be cooked."
After chopping up the leftover veggies, he added them to a big pot with the cooked rice and poured in a few quarts of store-bought chicken stock along with a hefty pinch of salt. Then he set this to a simmer.
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"Is salt seriously the only seasoning you're going to use?" I ask him, somewhat bewildered. I've been known to go out and buy 5+ spices for a soup recipe, so when Luke used salt and ONLY salt as the main seasoning in his soup, I was floored. "All you need is salt—you want to let the vegetables shine." Fair enough.
While the soup is simmering away, I saw him pull out a small container of something I couldn't quite make out. "Roasted caramelized apples," he winks, "game-changer."
"How can you make that at home," I inquire making a mental note to add this magical ingredient to veggie soup from now on.
"Dice up apples and onions and roast them in a pot together until soft and caramelized," he instructs, telling me that you could do roasted turnips and apples as well. In went the caramelized apples and a few good stirs and 20 more minutes later, the vegetable and wild rice soup was ready.
My Honest Thoughts On My Chef-Husband's Vegetable Soup
There wasn't an ounce of cream in this soup and yet I could eat it every day this fall. The charred veggies made a world of difference taste-wise and the wild rice was all the toothsome texture I needed, TBH. The addition of the roasted apples gave it a semi-sweet, not cloying finish which paired well with the fiery flavors.
With a crusty baguette on the side and a smidge of Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top, it was heaven in a bowl. Simple, but so good.
How to Make My Chef-Husband's Vegetable Soup at Home (Even if You're Not a Chef)
So say you don't have access to boutique vegetables and/or a plancha. No worries! You can still make a next-level veggie soup at home. First, pick up the best veggies you can find at the grocery store or farmer's market and cook them up on an outdoor griddle, in a skillet on the stove, or on the grill. Make the roasted apple-onion combo that Luke describes above and put it all together with some wild rice (or your favorite rice or pasta) and some veggie or chicken stock. Watch out, Luke!
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