Goodbye, Summer! Hello, Soup Season!

I was up early this morning, and I checked the weather forecast for the day. We are not supposed to get out of the 60s. Looks like fall is here in Muskegon.

There are a lot of different food-related items that people think of when they contemplate the coming of Fall. Of course, “pumpkin spice” begins to show up in everything from coffee-drinks to ice cream. And here in west Michigan, apples have a tendency to dominate the early fall. But I think the culinary “change of season” that I look forward to the most is soup season.

I don’t know what it is about a bowl of hot soup on a cool Autumn evening... Doesn’t really matter to me what type of soup it is, although I do have my favorites. But today’s blog is not about soup recipes (we’ll cover those in coming blogs and in our weekly recipe email. If you are not part of that recipe list, feel free to sign up here). Today I want to talk about some of the tools that help make my soup season great.

A few years ago, after having been gifted a number of butternut squash, I found a recipe for Butternut Squash Apple Soup. It was an immediate hit in our household, but the recipe, as written, was a little bit difficult and potentially messy. It called for cooking the squash and apples and then, in portions, transferring the hot mixture to a blender to “smooth out the lumps.” This worked, but it was rather tedious.

Then I remembered that we had inherited an immersion blender from my mother-in-law. This changed the game completely. Now the recipe was a joy to complete. No more transferring the hot soup to a blender. Now I could complete the process right in the original soup pot. If you don’t currently own an immersion blender, I would highly recommend checking one out.

The next tool I bought right at the end of last year’s soup season. It is called a Souper Cube tray. Basically it looks like an ice cube tray with oversized containers, and it is designed to quickly and easily freeze soups and broths. Once they are frozen, they can be popped out of the tray and put into freezer bags. This allows me to freeze leftover soup already portioned for use and makes utilizing those soups for lunches or snacks very easy.

The other tool that was a game changer for me is a wide-mouthed soup thermos. Now I can thaw and heat the soup portion, pour it into this thermos, and have a hot lunch at work that I really enjoy.

I’m sure there are other “soup tools” that I haven’t mentioned here. And I’d love to hear some of your favorite soup recipes. Send them to me at robby@kneadedkitchens.com, and we’ll try to share them with everybody. In the meantime, enjoy soup season!!

By Robby Richardson