The Borough Market Guide to Soup

Ed Smith

It’s reasonable to assume we’ve been cooking and consuming soup from the moment mud pots and clay cooking vessels were first shaped by human hand. It must now be one of the most universal and emotive of dishes – cream of tomato soup when you’re feeling unwell, chicken soup for the soul.

Soup comes in so many guises that its omnipresence should not be surprising. To underline the point, in various dictionaries ‘soup’ is quite vaguely defined as “a liquid dish”. It can also be an adjective, a noun, and a verb. So that’s … helpful.

Let’s see if we can do better. Typically, soup is savoury. (But not always.) It can be thin or thick; textural or creamy; a rustic broth with scraggy bits in, or a velvety velouté (yes, that is a tautology). Soup is warming and sustaining. It’s also cooling and palate cleansing. A shot or small bowl of soup is often used to wake the taste buds at the start of a meal (to enliven both you and your conversation), but can also be so soporifically steadying that a big bowl will send you straight to bed. The possibilities are pretty much limitless. Homely and comforting, or intriguing and transportive. Soup can be everything to everyone. Hmmm.

By and large, though, we’re on safe ground if we say that soup is frequently thrifty, tasty and wholesome. Indeed, it’s often a particularly brilliant way to use up ingredients that might soon be (or already are) labelled as ‘past it’ or even ‘waste’: peel and chunk up a few vegetables; simmer with aromatics, maybe a bit of spice, or some stock you made following a Sunday roast; blitz it, and that’s lunch or dinner sorted. With a few tweaks, that basic method can be applied to a huge variety of ingredients.

This supplement is the perfect example of soup’s infinite diversity. There are 14 recipes here. However, I’m sure that on another day, a different but equally mouthwatering 14 could have been chosen. Then a day later, 14 more.

I’m quite sure I’d want to dive spoon-first into all of them. Yet while each of those soups would have its own, unique, qualities, a few interchangeable characteristics would be repeated. Because there are very definitely some repeatable tips for making soups that both nourish and excite. So enjoy the soups that follow. But also feel free to tweak, twist and embellish them. Or cook something completely different, while bearing my eight rules of soup-making in mind...

1. Use ‘waste’ as the starting point.

We’ve already mentioned vegetables on their last legs. Other leftover ingredients can also provide inspiration: pair the last few rashers of bacon or lardons with lentils; the end of a jar of chickpeas could be matched with any stock, some leeks and parmesan; gnarly, nobbly bits of cheddar and leftover boiled potatoes will become far more than the sum of their parts; the pickings of a chicken carcass should prompt a noodle soup.

2. Soup what’s in front of you.

By which I mean: don’t spend too long planning, or seeking ingredients. Because it’s often the case that the most rewarding soups are conjured from things close to hand – whether that’s your fridge and cupboards; or perhaps you’ve taken inspiration from vegetables that are suddenly in season and in abundance at the greengrocers.Hold onto this supplement for soups that celebrate the springtime arrival of the wild garlic and asparagus seasons.3

3. Spice it up.

It’s no accident that so many of the very best soups have the word ‘spice’ or a specific spice named in their title. Soup loves bold seasoning and embraces whichever aromatic and enticing direction your spice drawer wants to take it in. See for example, see Kate Young’s spiced beetroot soup.

4. Be generous with fresh herbs

In part because of the freshness and fragrance that they bring. But also because, again, soups are an excellent way to ensure those herbs you bought for another recipe do not go unused. Olia Hercules’s tatar sherpa uses a whole bunch of coriander. So many of the other soups here also suggest (or would enjoy) a handful of parsley, a flutter of dill, a few basil leaves, and so on.

5. The best soups are interesting from first spoon to last.

Broths with bits in (such as Beca Lyne-Pirkis’s soupe au pistou) and textural soups (like Jenny Chandler’s lentil soup) have a head start. But to my mind every good soup has a garnish (or three). A cooling splodge of yoghurt or cream helps, as does the addition of some reserved ingredients or peels, chopped up or fried. You can see this here in my jerusalem artichoke soup. This is actually another great way to avoid waste – for example, via seeds and nuts that might otherwise go stale in their packets in your cupboard, or croutons made from the end of a loaf in your bread bin.

6. Add beans, pulses and grains.

For bulk, nourishment and also for the ‘keep things interesting’ point, consider whether your soup would benefit from a handful of barley, some rice or broken pasta. Have you got a jar of dried lentils or beans sitting in the cupboard that never seems to get used? Or some already-cooked pulses from a previous meal? Chuck them into your broth. A number of the soups here suggest exactly that.

7. Remember that anything can soup.

Sometimes it is the most unpromising or seemingly unlikely ingredients that contribute the biggest, most delectable flavours. The scrag end broth and Angela Clutton’s mussel number are superb examples of that.

8. That said, you can’t beat a classic.

In here you’ll see a slow-roast tomato soup, French onion, and minestrone. See also: borscht, broccoli and stilton, seafood chowder, and on, and on, and on.