Topic · Soups Making 101
Tips For Making The Perfect Purée Soups
We went through many tips already, but the most important one beside consistency and flavor is about safety when blending hot liquid.
Cooking
- Cooking it right. make sure to not under or overcook the vegetables
- Don’t be shy about seasoning. Season the veggies with salt, pepper, and the spices of your choice when sweating or roasting them. This will help to extract the flavor. The seasoning will be diluted when you add the liquid. If you are not sure, taste, and season by increments.
- Adding the wrong liquid. Stock is better than water, right? Not necessary. Think about flavor profiles. How many flavors and at which concentration do you have them? If you have a lot of flavors, covering with water will be fine, however, if you think you don’t have much, adding a stock will definitely be a good idea.
- Adding too much cream. Typically, purée soups with cream should have 5% to 10% of cream maximum.
- Change the cream for other dairies like plain yogurt, crème fraîche, sour cream, coconut milk, and buttermilk. The last two should only be added to bowls when they’re ready to eat. Reheating them will make them curdle, turn them too acidic, too sour, or both.
- Don’t skip the toppings. Purée soup is not baby food. Toppings or garnishes must have some textural contrast to add texture, crunch, and burst of flavor. Add them to the soup just before serving, so they don’t get mushy.
Safety
When it comes time to puree soup, think about safety and make sure to use the right equipment.
Immersion blenders are the ideal equipment for puree soup. They are efficient and safe to use. There’s no mess of transferring the soup; all the pureeing is done right in the pot. When buying an immersion blender, the one with more power will always perform better, so go for higher watts.
Blenders do a great job of pureeing soups, but they are more hazardous. To avoid burns and big mess make sure to:
- Use a ladle to fill the blender jug
- Fill up the jar by 50% only – work in batches
- Place a folded kitchen rag on the top of the lid
- Open the lid to release the steam, then place back.
- Keep holding the lid with a rag just before blending
- Always start blending from the lowest speed, then increase the speed as needed.
Vegetable mills works fine to puree your soup. It’s a little bit more time consuming and requires some muscle work, but will get the job done.
Food processors are not good for the job. They tend to chop up the soup into small pieces rather than actually pureeing it, leaving the soup with a slightly gritty texture and non-uniform pieces.
