We're back (with Soupstack!)
slurp slurp!
Hello! You might have noticed that it’s been a while. Over a month, to be exact. Sorry about that. Sometimes life simply gets in the way — in this case, we both got very sick for like a week (different weeks!) and there also was a lot of traveling and working that had to be done.
In times like those, it’s not as easy to find the time to write this stuff. I was worried we’d lost momentum entirely but not to worry, here we are again.
This time, we’re focusing on soup, on account of everyone getting sick and the weather getting colder. Also, who doesn’t like soup? We’ve got stock-making suggestions, two soup recipes, and more.
Hope you enjoy, and mark your calendars for Thursday, November 17, as that’s when our next live show is happening. Remember, your paid subscriptions help pay our artists!
xoxo
CDG + Babz
Variance in the spoonful: Two Friendly Soups
by Babz
It is I, maker of soups, made of soups; your SoupFriend, if you will.
Silly though it may seem, my passion for soup really do be as vast and deep as oceans. It wasn't until Cassidy proposed the Soupstack that I really considered just how much soup and I were intertwined.
The Soups of my Childhood — tomato-based Maryland Crab or its more decadent cousin Cream of Crab — were mainstays at birthday celebrations and holiday gatherings.
My mother made what she called "Spaghetti Soup," on what now seems like a weekly basis. With Big Working Single Parent Vibes this one is an honorable mention that consists of spaghetti, Spicy V8, ground beef, and bags of frozen vegetables. Oh, and a metric fuckton of Old Bay.
More to the point, part of the impetus for Soupstack came from both Cassidy and I catching what was probably the hellish RSV virus we've been starting to hear about. I was colloquially calling it the Bushwick Fever for a hot soup second. I've taken to making soups for friends when illness strikes.
It's something my grandmother used to do for me anytime I came down with something growing up, even when I was just faking to stay home from school. When she first got her Alzheimer's diagnosis, I started memorizing her recipes. Soups are kind of like a remembrance ritual for me.
In honor of that, and to keep everyone nourished in what is sure to be a super fun winter of RSV, COVID, and Flu, I now present you with two soup recipes, one vegan and one not-at-all vegan.
The first is my own take on a soup that gained TikTok Virality over the summer, consisting of little more than Garlic for all the Gworlic Gworls out there. The second is my own take on Nana's classic chicken noodle soup because there's really no beating an OG when it comes to medicinal home cooking.
So without further ado, let's get to Soupin'!
Gworlic Gworl Soup
3 heads of garlic for roasting
20 cloves of garlic, peeled and left whole
4 cups of veggie stock
1 medium-sized potato, diced
1 medium sweet onion, diced
2 scallions, chopped
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cumin
½ tsp cayenne
½ cup of extra creamy oat milk
Salt/pepper to taste
This soup, of TikTok (in)fame(y), is honestly too medicinal to be a standalone a meal, so I highly recommend pairing it with something easy like a grilled cheese. You could also be Extra and do a grilled mozzarella, parmesan, and asiago with pesto. Either pairs just as well with this Intensely Garlicy puree. You wanna make this one the night before serving so the flavors have time to mature and don't get overpowered by the fresh garlic's taste.
Roast your garlic heads by cutting off their tips and wrapping each head in foil. Douse them in olive oil and throw them in the oven at 400 for about a half hour. While those roast, peel the 20 cloves of the garlic you're leaving raw and set that aside.
When the roasted garlic is done, pull it out of the oven and let it cool. Once you can touch the roasted cloves you can just squeeze the garlic from its peels into a bowl.
Dice your onion/potato and chop your scallions. Set aside the green scallion tops. Toss the onion and white part of the scallion into a large pot with a drizzle of olive oil. Let those brown (5-7 minutes).
Toss in your spices and TOAST them (about 1 minute). Add your stock and bring it to a boil. Turn down the heat and add all the garlic and potato. Let that simmer for about 30 minutes or until your potatoes are soft.
Toss it all into a blender and puree that ish. Put your pureed soup back in the pot, add in your oat milk and stir. At this point I Highly Recommend putting it in the fridge and letting it sit overnight, as previously mentioned.
Reheat it on the stove the next day and serve with your chopped green scallion as garnish. If you want some extra protein in there, Cass and I have been using these vegan Boca crumbles kind of like bacon bits. You just saute them for like 7 minutes and add to whatever dish you want!
Nana's Chicken Noodle Soup
2 chicken breast or thighs (take your pick)
3 carrots, sliced
2 celery stalks, sliced
1 medium onion, diced
3 cloves of garlic, whole
5-6 cups of chicken broth
Half a bag of egg noodles
5 sprigs of fresh thyme
3 sprigs of rosemary
1 bay leaf
Salt and pepper to taste
Highly recommend even if you're not sick and just Feeling Lazy. Bring that broth to a boil, put that chicken in there, and boil for about a half hour. While that chicken cooks, chop all your veggies to your desired Hearty Soup Texture. I like mine bigger for variance in the spoonful.
Remove that chicken, add in your garlic, veggies, and herbs (I highly recommend tying the sprigs into a bundle with twine but like understandably no one keeps twine on hand, so).
If you want to be Fancy, you can saute your veggies first but tbh the flavor difference is Minute at best and it requires a second pot. Turn the heat down so that the veggies get a nice simmer, about 25 minutes until they soften. Shred your chicken (and remove bones if applicable) while the veggies cook.
Add your chicken back in and then add your noodles and allow them to cook for about 9-10 minutes or whatever the packaging says. Remove your herb bundle and serve. THAT'S IT. THAT'S ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IT'S GREAT AND DELICIOUS.
Stocking the Soup Pot (With Stock)
By Cassidy Dawn Graves
While I didn’t cook either soup mentioned here, I did make the stock. Making homemade chicken stock is something I’m relatively new to, and it always makes me feel like some sort of rustic villager or very domestic person.
It’s also just objectively a good way to use all the lil bits of stuff you would otherwise throw away. I never plan to make stock, but I do try to keep two bags in the freezer: one for chicken parts and one for veggie scraps. The chicken parts are usually the bones and remains of rotisserie chickens I occasionally buy from the store or the Ecuadorian chicken restaurant nearby.
The veggie bag is for carrot peels, onion skin, parsley stems, tiny garlic bits, wilting chunks of celery stalk, and other such things. (I usually don’t save the very outer skin/peel unless it looks super clean.) These components organically accumulate as I cook; since everything’s frozen, there’s no urgency to use them ASAP.
I’ve only made chicken stock about 3-4 times now. I mostly did it stovetop, googling random recipes or consulting my copy of Samin Nosrat’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat for guidance. The first time was mediocre; I followed some recipe’s suggestion to replace the liquid with water as it evaporated, and after way too many hours I was unsurprisingly left with a fairly bland stock.
The next couple times were better, but still kind of frustrating in how long it took. The end results were pretty good, but not life-changing. Perhaps… there was a better way.
For my most recent stock attempt, I tried something new. We have an Instant Pot and don’t use it for much more than rice. I found an Instant Pot stock recipe from Carla Lalli Music, who I do generally trust, and gave it a whirl because our freezer was too full of stuff and I kept procrastinating stock-making due to the time commitment.
I threw in the usual: bones n’ meat bits and the veggie scraps, plus some garlic cloves, a sprinkle of MSG, some thyme sprigs, possibly sage, bay leaves, peppercorns, maybe a dried chili or two. Carla’s suggestion to include a knob of ginger seemed fun so I did that too.
I was somewhat skeptical that a kitchen tool known for convenience and shortcuts would result in better stock than the stovetop method, but the Instant Pot proved me wrong. (If only I had taken photos! We’ve since used all the stock, so that at least proves something.)
Not only was I able to leave for an improv jam before the stock was finished pressure-cooking and come back to a finished stock that was still very hot, not overcooked, and just needed some straining, it was also more flavorful than my prior attempts. Looks like I’ll be doing it this way from now on — even a rustic villager needs a little help from trendy appliances sometimes.
I also want to acknowledge how nice it is to be cooked for, especially when you’re feeling truly awful. Plus, it was kind of mind-boggling to watch how much garlic went into that garlic soup. Sometimes, cooking is a show, and you get to be the spectator. Spec-tastor?