I have been a fan of the universal recipe since the 1990s, when Amy Dacyczyn of Leeds wrote about them in her “Tightwad Gazette” newsletter and books. I liked the idea of the flexibility of using whatever you had on hand to create muffins, rice pilaf and casseroles.
Of course, there’s no law that demands home cooks follow recipes exactly, and it’s simple enough to substitute green beans for peas in a chicken pot pie (although, one wonders, why would a person do that?).
But the universal recipe creator (there are many nowadays, thanks to the Internet) rips apart the ingredients, prep, combinations and cooking times to reveal a skeleton—so to speak—that can be filled out with any number of possibilities.
I thought I’d come up with a universal recipe of my own. I’ve made what I think of as a “kitchen sink” soup for years.
First, I sauté onions, shallots, celery and/or garlic—in the spirit of universality, whatever’s in the pantry. Then I might add some ground turkey or chicken sausage, and cook that. Or I might decide to go veggie because there is indeed, no poultry in the house (we don’t eat red meat). Then I’d add some broth and tomatoes. Then what? Beans or rice or potatoes for carbs. Finally, the veggies. Carrots are always good and I usually have them on hand. This is a good place for those green beans. I like corn in my soups, unless the liquid is white or clear. Yellow looks unappealing against those backdrops.
Some sea salt, pepper and good old “Italian seasoning” mix. It’s soup!
Except when it wasn’t. The result would always taste good, but sometimes you could eat it with a fork.
I knew what was wrong, of course. It was all well and good to toss things into a pot and call it soup, but if I wanted real soup and not some stovetop casserole concoction, I needed to have a better plan. Heck, just some kind of schema.
My proportions were off. I wondered if I could figure it out on my own. But proportions have to do with math, and I’ve never been good at math. It frightens me. Cooking involves chemistry, another one of my hated subjects. I had liquids, solids and heat. There had to be a way I could work them together to make a soup that had an appropriate thickness and texture. Then visions of Bunsen burners and pipettes arose in my head, and I did what any other self-respecting librarian would have done. I googled.
And I found what I was looking for. As I skimmed, I saw one of my mistakes right off the bat. I rarely used a whole carton (four cups) of organic chicken or vegetable broth. That seemed like a lot. I’m usually only cooking for my husband, Paul, and myself, and while soup makes great leftovers, I didn’t want it hanging around more than three days.
Next I worried about the four cups of vegetables, beans and/or grains. I needed more guidance about rice. Pasta didn’t worry me. Rice, however, expands. I’d had a number of experiences with rice turning my soup into a mysterious, hybrid dish that could be eaten on a flat plate.
Maybe I would start with one half cup of rice. No, one quarter.
It may seem like I was spending a lot of time on soup, but I felt it was an investment. What’s more integral, more basic, than soup? Well, bread, I guess—but soup and bread are as closely conjoined as peanut butter and jelly. Panera has built quite a little business empire on just that concept.
One of my favorite “Seinfeld” episodes was the one about the “Soup Nazi.” I loved his dedication to his soup. I appreciated the way he ran his business exactly the way he wanted to. Most of all, I wanted to sample his dishes.
I was angry when Elaine found his recipes and made his secrets public. The Soup Nazi closed shop before I even had a chance to visit!
All right, I am not so besotted with soup that I can’t differentiate between fact and fiction. My enthusiasm extends only as far as humming “Soup of the evening, beautiful soup!” from “Alice in Wonderland.”
We haven’t had much of a winter this year, but there have been some raw days when a pot of soup has felt and tasted like just the right thing.
So, I tried the recipe, following all the mysterious proportions, and the end result was—soup. Yes, real soup with turkey and veggies and even rice floating around in a tasty broth.
I always tell my students, “I don’t have all the answers, but I know where to find them.” Excuse me now, while I go to sip some soup.
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