My all-time favorite soup is my mom’s homemade chili with a side of cornbread. It reminds me of home, and often is perfectly seasoned, and the cornbread is amazing with it. If you know me, you know that I will go feral for soup, especially the Caf’s Tomato Bisque. What classifiies as a soup? According to the Merriam-Webster, “A liquid food especially with a meat, fish, or vegetable stock as a base, and often containing pieces of solid food.” The best tomato soup that I have ever had, strangely comes from the Caf on campus, with a close second being from the Hub. You might have read that and been fairly concerned about my palate, but I am someone who grew up eating soup heated up from a can with a splash of milk. The delectable smoothness of the Caf’s Tomato soup made me feel at home, especially when they pair it with a grilled cheese sandwich with some lunch meat. The slightly orange tinge to the soup is quite concerning, but once I eat a spoonful, my troubles melt away. The reason that the Hub is second, is because while I do enjoy a soup with chunks of veggies, i feel that it is too greasy. I did try the Tomato Bisque from the Fruited Plain in Sioux Center, and it almost beat the Hub’s soup, even coming with a chunk of bread, which was delicious by itself, but almost heavenly when dipped in the soup. I tried to make a fancy soup, and it got close to the soups on campus, but it was slightly off. I used a can of Campbell’s tomato soup and a can of woodfired tomatoes, as well as a splash of milk and some assorted spices.
I recently had a conversation with a friend about what classifies as a soup, and he said, “Soup is a cereal.” I was greatly concerned by this remark, as that was incorrect, as soup is a soup. Something else that qualifies as a soup is the ocean, as it contains a liquie base, which is water, as well as meat and vegetables, which are the animals and vegetation. Soups can be classified under four classificiations, which are thin, thick, cold and international. Thin soups include broths and are often prepared without a thickening agents, such as chicken broth. Thick soups are cream soups, bisques and chowders, Cold soups are often regular soups but are served cold. International soups are nambed by their country of origin. My sophomore year of high school, we had a foreign exchange student that we were hosting, and she wanted to make food from home. So, she made a soup with a broth that tasted sweet and had a hard-boiled egg with chicken in it, and it was amazing. You can make soup with anything. My roommate even made me some tomato soup last year and put it in a homemade bread bowl, and that was delicious too. The bread did get a little bit soggy, but other than that it was a pretty well-mae soup.
You may ask why I did not mention any stews in this article about soup, and I will respond to that with “Soup and Stew are different things, yes they have the same attributes, but stew has less liquied and has chunks of ingredients, whereas a soup has bite-sized ingedients.” Do not take that as me being against stews, I enjoy a good stew, I just like soup better if you cannot tell from the above paragraphs. I hope to learn the recipe that the Caf uses to make their tomato soup so I can enjoy it once I graduate.
