Soups firmly entered the daily diet of man. Today, many can say with confidence that they can hardly imagine their life without this seemingly simple, but at the same time very tasty and healthy dish. Among the huge variety, thick soups stand out. They are unique in that they can easily replace both the first and second dishes. This interesting feature allows you to re-evaluate the cooking process, making significant adjustments to the diet.
Generalized classification
With cooking, all soups are conventionally divided into two categories:
- Winter. They are usually hot, thick and rich. Usually they are cooked in some kind of broth or milk.
- Summer. These are cold dishes, consisting mainly of vegetables. Usually they are eaten in the heat to get an extra sip of freshness and coolness.
Unlike some European countries in Russia, thick soups are still the most popular. They are usually very fragrant, rich and high-calorie. Such dishes have always been respected in Russia. Usually they were prepared in fish, chicken or meat broth with the addition of cereals, pasta or vegetables.
Thick soups are primarily distinguished by their consistency. Sometimes they are even more like stews. Nevertheless, the technology for preparing such a dish has its own specific laws. Such soups are distinguished from the rest by the time it takes to cook them. This process can even be called not cooking, but rather longing. Products slowly reach the standard, gradually exchanging with each other their tastes and aromas.
Photo story
Cooking thick soups is not difficult. Typically, the preparation of any of them can be divided into 3 stages:
- Boiling meat for broth. In the case of vegetarian vegetable soups, this point can be skipped.
- Grinding the main ingredients. Depending on the recipe chosen, the products are cut into pieces of the right size.
- Connection of components with subsequent cooking. At the final stage, as a rule, the necessary spices and seasonings are introduced.
Following a given pattern, you can consider the process of preparing a regular thick vegetable soup. For work, use any of the available vegetables. The procedure will be as follows:
- First, in a saucepan, heat the vegetable oil, and then fry the chopped onions in it.
- Add the remaining vegetables and pour them with pre-cooked broth.
- Cook foods until cooked, and at the very end enter the selected seasonings.
Such a soup will be a wonderful full meal and will help a person not to feel hunger for a long time.
Mashed soup
One of the options for a high-calorie soup is a dish in which all the ingredients are brought to a mushy state. Such a work of culinary art looks not quite usual. And it is called "soup puree." The method of its preparation has some features and requires the availability of certain equipment. Usually for this you need: a frying pan, pan and blender. The name of such a dish depends on the main ingredient that is used in it. How to cook such thick soups? Recipes with photos will help you better understand this issue. Take, for example, zucchini soup puree.
To prepare it you will need:
4 medium zucchini, 1 onion, potatoes, carrots, 1 liter of finished broth (vegetable or chicken), a glass of 10% cream, 3 cloves of garlic, 100 grams of vegetable oil and herbs.
Operating procedure:
- First, all components must be washed and cleaned.
- Then they need to be crushed. Chop the onion at will, grate the carrots and garlic, and chop the potatoes and zucchini. Once the products are ready, you can proceed to the main actions.
- Put the zucchini and potatoes in a deep pan, pour them with broth and put on fire.
- In a pan in oil, fry the carrots with onions. After this, the products must be immediately transferred to a blender.
- The other vegetables should be sent there as soon as they are ready.
- Use a blender to turn products into a homogeneous mass.
- Add lightly warmed cream, mix and cook in a pan for another 5-7 minutes.
Ready-made fragrant soup can be decorated with herbs and invite everyone to the table.
Goulash soup
The best opportunity to learn how to cook thick soups is recipes with photos. Simple and tasty dishes become more understandable when you are given the opportunity to see with your own eyes the intermediate result at each stage. The national cuisines of many Slavic countries of Europe are rich in such masterpieces. A vivid example of this is the Hungarian goulash soup.
It can be prepared with the following components:
300 grams of beef and the same amount of potatoes, one and a half liters of water, 100 grams of onions, salt, 150 grams of carrots, ground paprika, 3 tablespoons of tomato paste, herbs and a little vegetable oil.
Cooking such a soup is easy:
- First of all, the meat should be cut into cubes, and then fry until a characteristic crust is formed.
- Add salt, paprika, chopped onion rings and simmer for 20 minutes under the lid.
- Pour water into the pan and continue cooking until half-cooked.
- Add the remaining components and complete the process.
In a bowl, the soup can be lightly sprinkled with herbs, and some prefer to add a couple more tablespoons of good thick sour cream.
Bean soup
Sometimes, various cereals are used to achieve greater density of the first courses. Such soups are very nutritious and high-calorie. There are many different options here. For example, you can make delicious thick soups with beans . Simple recipes are not difficult to repeat if the following products are selected on the desktop:
100 grams of beans, a couple of pieces of chicken, 2 carrots, onions, 2 cloves of garlic, 1.5 liters of water, 0.5 kilograms of tomatoes (fresh or canned), 2 liters of chicken broth and herbs (parsley, dill).
The dish is prepared in several stages:
- Beans must first be soaked in water. Better to do it at night.
- In the morning, pour the liquid, and add fresh water to the pan, put it on the fire and cook the beans with gentle boiling for 10 minutes.
- Grind vegetables in any convenient way. There are no specific requirements for shapes and sizes.
- Rinse beans and mix with prepared vegetables.
- Fold the products in a pan, fill in the greens, pour everything with broth and put on the stove.
- After boiling add sliced fillet and salt. Products must be cooked for at least half an hour.
Ready soup turns out to be tender, fragrant and very tasty. Fans of different seasonings can use them in any quantity. The main thing is that they do not greatly interrupt the aroma of the main products.
Noodles soup
Pasta is a great addition with which wonderful thick soups are made from the usual first course. It’s much easier to follow the cooking process step by step. First you need to prepare all the main components:
0.5 kilograms of chicken wings and drumsticks, 200 grams of egg noodles, onion, 3 cloves of garlic, 1/3 pods of sweet pepper, salt, 1 carrot, ground pepper, a little butter and vegetable oil, feather onion, Provencal herbs, and greens (parsley and dill).
All steps must be performed in strict sequence, one after the other:
- First, you need to wash the chicken, remove the rest of the feathers, and then put it in a pan, pour two liters of water and cook, constantly removing the foam formed on the surface, until the meat becomes soft.
- During this time, you can prepare vegetables. It is better to cut potatoes into cubes, carrots and peppers - into strips, and onions - to chop randomly.
- Now you need to do the vegetable frying. To do this, heat both types of oil in a pan. Then fry the onions in boiling fat, and after 5 minutes - carrots and peppers. Stew foods on low heat for 10 minutes. So that they do not burn, the mixture can be poured with water or broth. At the very end, they should be salted and pepper.
- Boil the noodles in salt water until half cooked and put in a colander.
- Boil the broth, add the frying into it, and after 3 minutes add the noodles. Now the fire needs to be minimized. In this position, the dish must be cooked for another couple of minutes.
Such a soup does not have to be infused. You can eat it right away, still hot.
Soup kharcho"
In Georgia, they love thick soups. The recipe step by step with the photo of the famous "Kharcho" will help even a novice housewife learn how to cook this fragrant, high-calorie and very tasty dish. First you need to collect all the necessary products:
400 grams of beef, 3 onions, 100 grams of rice, a clove of garlic, 0.5 kilograms of tomatoes, some spices, dill, cilantro and parsley.
Cooking technology for Kharcho soup:
- First, the meat must be cut off from the bone and arbitrarily cut into pieces.
- Fold the products in a deep pan, pour cold water (2.5 liters) and put on the stove. After boiling, make the fire smaller. During cooking, you must constantly remove the foam. After an hour, you can salt, add a celery stalk or parsley root. This will add broth to the broth. The total cooking time is one and a half hours. At the end, the meat with bones must be removed using a slotted spoon, and the broth itself must be filtered.
- At this time, pass the onions in a pan.
- Add to it pieces of meat and fry them together for 4-5 minutes.
- Pour 2-3 tablespoons of the broth into the pan and simmer the food under the lid for 15-20 minutes.
- This time will be enough to prepare the tomatoes. First, they must be lowered for 2 minutes in boiling water. Then, carefully removing the skin, cut the pulp into small pieces, and add them to the pan to the stew with onions.
- Put the broth on the stove again and bring to a boil.
- Transfer the contents of the pan to it, reduce the heat, and after 5 minutes, pour rice and spices.
- At the very end of cooking, add grated garlic and chopped herbs.
Before pouring the soup on plates, he must be given a good brew. In Georgia, this spicy, rich, thick and very tasty soup is highly respected. In many families, it is considered the main course of the daily diet.