Very Cruel Vegetable Soup

So, listen.

While there are no actual pieces of meat in this soup, plenty of animals had to suffer for it, which makes it taste better. It is also cruel to you in a sort of self-flagellatory way, because you are basically shaving a year or two off your life every time you eat this. Just call me Paula Dean, bitches.

And yes, I have offered alternatives for those of you who fear death or love animals, because I guess deep down I’m a softie.

Let’s get started!!!

Step one: Get a pot – a big one. Put a ¼ cup to ½ cup of bacon fat in it. If you are only making a small amount of soup, use maybe a tablespoon of fat.



Yuuuuupp



Step one for wimps: listen, if you can’t eat bacon because whatever, take butter, or for you hardcore veg-heads, coconut oil. Get something that’s solid at room temperature: trans fats are what make it taste so goddamn amazing.

Heat up that fat to about medium heat. The fat should be melted but not super hot or smoking.

Step two: an onion, diced. I use sweet onions because I can chop them without my eyes watering. Or maybe I am part robot? YOU BE THE JUDGE.



AN ONION



Add it to the pot.

Step three: lots of garlic. Unless you are a weakling, in which case you can add like one or two cloves. I guess.

This is about seven cloves.

Add those to the pot. Add a splash of cheap white wine because life is short and people are annoying and your boss didn’t give you that raise you deserve. Then turn down the heat and cover with a lid.

Next: take a frying pan, heat up about a tablespoon of olive oil. Chop various veggies (in this case, I eyeballed enough of each to fill the pan but not crowd it) and cook each one separately. You may want to add a little oil with each vegetable – I did, and it was good, but probably not strictly necessary.

The veggies I chose were brussel sprouts, cauliflower, celery, carrots and bok choi, but you could probably do this with any tough, fibrous vegetable. I wouldn’t recommend red or green peppers because I’m pretty sure they’d turn to mush – same with zuchinni. Asparagus is also very good in this. Some photos:

Cook each vegetable until tender (but not toooo tender!! Probably 5-10 minutes of stir frying per vegetable, depending on how small you cut them) and then add it to the pot. Once you’ve got all your vegetables in there, it’s time to add broth! I’m a cheap motherfucker so I just used chicken bouillon powder.

Because I'm lazy

Count how many cups of water you throw into the pot until you are satisfied that there is enough liquid. Look at the bouillon package and it’ll tell you how many packets/teaspoons/whatever to throw in for the amount of water you used. My particular bouillon instructed me to add one packet for every ¾ cup of water, which means two packets per 1.5 cups. I added 9 cups of water, so using the power of math, I determined that I would need 12 packets of bouillon.

Does that seem like a lot? It is. If you are using this method, add about half that amount, stir the “broth” around, and then give it a taste, especially if you are not pathologically addicted to salt like I am. You can always add more!

You can also totally make your own broth with a pot and some water and a chicken carcass, but I did not have a chicken carcass, nor did I have several hours to let that fucker simmer. Making broth takes time, and there is no shame in being disorganized or choosing to watch Shark Week instead. Do what you gotta do, kids.

Next: more spices.

"From Asia"

I kept things simple and added about a tablespoon (okay, two) of cayenne pepper and another tablespoon of fresh-ground black pepper. You could add other things to this, but it’s already full of salt and spices from the bouillon – don’t screw around with it too much, okay? And if you’re new at this cooking thing, add a little bit of spice, then taste it to decide if you want to add more. Over-spicing things into oblivion is one of the most common newbie mistakes – I know this because I did it for years.

Final touch: whipping cream???

Fuuuccckkk yyyoooouu ahahaha

I am weird in that I like my soup to have a certain opacity to it. If you also like your soup to look less clear, add about a tablespoon of whipping cream (or table cream or half and half, I guess). Stir that bitch around and it’ll “thicken” up ever so slightly and just give you this really satisfying colour



Sooooo goooood



Once the broth is heated through (you can turn the heat up to medium again, stir occasionally and wait about five minutes), put this dream machine into and bowl and then stuff your face with it.

  

FUCK YEAH.

Alright, so, let’s have a quick chat before I leave you. Yes, this soup is full of fat. If you keep reading you will quickly discover that almost every thing I make is full of fat. Fat is delicious! I am not going to tell you it’s the best thing for you, but you do need to eat a certain amount of fat and salt just to stay alive. Fat is not your enemy, it’s not evil, it’s not going to sneak into your room in the middle of the night and make lampshades out of your skin.

Sorry, that got dark.

Anyway, you could cut out a lot of the fat if you wanted to, but that would also make it way less delicious. You could replace the various saturated fats (the bacon fat, the cream) with unsaturated fats (olive oil, disappointment) or just reduce the amounts considerably. No, it wouldn’t taste as good, but it wouldn’t taste bad, necessarily. If you’re worried about salt or preservatives, make your own broth or buy the free-range organic low-sodium bouillon. I prefer to spend that kind of money on shoes, but if you want to drop it on broth, be my guest.

I justify this soup by pointing out that it’s chock-full of really good for you veggies and that per serving the amount of fat is actually not that outrageous. I would also probably just eat a spoonful of bacon fat for the hell of it, though, so maybe don’t trust anything I say.

Happy soup!

Love,

Lesley.