The versatility of soup

This comes from a recent cooking experience, but it probably hit me more because of a thread I'd read about some people finding eating stew in fantasy novels unrealistic, because it is so labor-intensive.

(It may have come from something that was written humorously being taken literally by people who don't cook.)

There are certainly circumstances where stew would not be practical, but once ingredients are assembled -- which can be very quick -- soups and stews don't require a lot of effort and do give you a lot of versatility.

(This versatility is also true of casseroles, but there are more things that can go wrong.)

The recent cooking experience reminded me of that, and if I'd thought of it sooner, I could have taken photos.

We are starting to have turkey less often, and there are fewer fans of the turkey soup, but when we do have it I can't bear to waste the bones, because I know they make such a good broth base.

After Thanksgiving I had put the bones and some skin in a freezer bag and put them in the freezer. They had stayed there until recently. Any separate leftover meat had been used up already, but there was still meat on the bones for the neck and wings.

I pulled out that bag on a Friday, put some salt and water over it, and set it on low heat.

I understand that it is common to also add some vinegar to help with the breaking down. I have only ever worked with poultry for that. If I were starting with thicker bones, I might add an acid.

I let that simmer all day. When I got off work, I strained the broth into another pot. With the bones in the strainer, I pulled off that meat and added it back to the broth, along with some carrots. Then I whipped up my home made noodles (one egg, a half egg shell's worth of milk, some salt, and then flour to make a dough).

That, and then stirring as I brought everything to a boil, was the most labor-intensive part of the experience, and it was not that bad.

It was a good soup, but there was a lot more broth than items in the broth. Ladling that into a bowl made those bowls fine, but then there was still all of this good broth that I still couldn't bear to waste.

I had recently made mushroom tetrazzini. Because we had been at Costco instead of Fred Meyer, I had quite a few leftover mushrooms. I sliced these up and added them as a noodle substitute. Mushrooms are low-carb, but texture-wise they fill a similar role. I also sliced up a couple of chicken tenders to fill out the meat. I heated up this new mix, which still had carrots, and stray bits of turkey and noodle. It was once again a good soup.

I still had a lot of leftover broth.

It occurred to me that when I was putting in my homemade noodles, that the texture was kind of similar to the dough for crescent rolls. We had a pack (because I had needed one for another recipe, and I bought multiple to take advantage of a sale). I pulled those out, sliced them up, and threw them in.

That was a failure; the dough disintegrated in the broth. All this did was make the broth thicker. Oddly, back when I was using some of that original turkey meat to make turkey and dumplings, I had put in too much dough, resulting in an unfortunate thickness that I had to try baking and frying. Edible, but not ideal.

It was still an okay soup, and there was still some broth left.

The final version had the rest of the mushrooms, some carrots from something else, and some ramen noodles.

There are a few points in here, but the reason I address it at all is that being able to prepare your own food has value. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, but being able to put something together that will nourish and satisfy has a great value.

When you can combine that with getting more out of what you do buy, and taking advantage of sales and discounts, it all works together to help.

There are recipes, but there is also an experience that builds up, where you can imagine different combinations that will work together, including odds and ends and leftovers. Soups and stews can be very forgiving, even when you make mistakes.

And mistakes are part of the process. Don't get discouraged when things don't come out as you hoped. 

You learn from that too.