Soup Chick®

Seven soups every Saturday: black bean soup recipes

In the house where I grew up, no one even thought to eat black bean soup. To us, soup meant chicken soup (homemade with matzoh balls, or canned with noodles), or tomato soup from the red-and-white can. Occasionally we had clam chowder, the real New England kind, but never homemade. So, when I went off to college and began to cook with beans, as every college kid on a budget learns to do, the whole vista of black bean soups opened up to me. Spicy, sweet, smooth or chunky, I loved them all. And, to this day, I've never tired of them.

Seven soups every Saturday: tortilla soup recipes

My earliest memory of really good tortilla soup involves blazing hot sun, ice cold cerveza, and a roadside restaurant in a dusty village near Lake Chapala, Mexico. We'd stopped for lunch with my husband Ted's aunt and uncle, who retired to the area many years ago, and as hot as we were, we all ordered soup to help us cool down. It's true that spicy food cools your body, and it's equally true that good tortilla soup is a comfort food 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. Lime makes this soup special, though the recipe, like all traditional recipes, varies with the soup maker.

Seven soups every Saturday: blended soup recipes

If you're trying to convert vegetable haters to vegetable lovers, purée those carrots and broccoli and cauliflower and potatoes until they metamorphose into something altogether new. That technique just happens to make the very best soups, too. All kinds of soups benefit from a brief encounter with an immersion blender or standing blender, so don't limit your blended soups to vegetable-based creations. Grains, seafood, tofu -- almost any soup, when puréed to a smooth consistency, takes on a completely different character. No chewing needed -- these soups slip right down your throat -- though croutons or a crunchy garnish add lovely textural interest.