Vegetable Soup II

Sunday dinner growing up at our house was either noodle soup or vegetable. Not a choice, but taking turns - one week noodle, one week vegetables. Needless to say, there was something about that boiled chicken that made me favor the vegetable soup Sundays. Mom dished up the soup in a worn yellow bowl. If you are of a certain age you will remember those sets of glass bowls, graduated in size like nesting dolls in three colors - yellow, blue and red. Yellow was the largest.
I think my mom still has that bowl today.
The vegetables were canned and the broth had the familiar taste of Campbell's, but it was tasty. Of course, I recall that food was ever abundant in those days. We certainly didn't walk around eating between meals or drinking soda pop. That was a treat.
Sometime after I worked at the little cafe in Gackle I began making soup a bit differently than my mom. I don't know why or how, or if it was a natural instinct to create a broth and then add the vegetables so they would not be boiled to death, but somehow it was a combination of skills learned from not one, but two great cooks.
That brings us back to Sunday's simmering kettle of bones. After a long day of aromatic cooking, I strained off the liquid and put it in the refrigerator to chill over night. With this weather, we use the front porch. It protects things from the animals and keeps things like a refrigerator.
About noon the next day, I skimmed the fat off the top of the soup stock. With proper chilling it rises to the surface and hardens, however there are a few differences between chicken fat and beef fat. Sometimes the chicken fat gels at the surface and is a bit more difficult to remove. Beef fat usually hardens into a layer ice over a pond in the spring - breakable, yet hard enough to pick off large pieces. At any rate, the flavor is in the stock and removing the fat won't affect that at all and the soup will be more palatable and way better for your health. Next I added dried tomatoes and two quarts of canned tomatoes and allowed that to simmer for several hours. Oh... that alone makes for a wonderful tasting broth, but it was time to add the the other ingredients. From my private stock of home grown vegetables there were potatoes, do not use russets, but reds, because russets are too soft for reheating several times.
There was corn, purple beans, beets and carrots. Once those vegetables are fork soft, you can taste your soup and adjust your seasonings. We like to add a few drops of hot sauce to our bowls rather than salt. When we were young we added a little vinegar and cream if we wanted a more borscht-like flavor to our soup. I did have a head of cabbage in the drawer from my garden, but it had signs of aging and so I chose not to use it. You can add any vegetables you wish. If you use canned green beans or corn, put the liquid into the pot.
Of course, we ended up with a huge tureen of soup, so after the second meal, while the soup was still thoroughly heated, I boiled some water and warmed up the two quart jars from the tomatoes, two lids and two rims. Then I filled the jars with soup, turned on the lids and turned the jars upside down until they cooled. When you tip them up they seal, softly, but they still seal. Put the jars in the refrigerator and the soup will stay fresh for about six weeks. If you can resist that long. It makes for a wonderful quick meal after working all day ... in the winter.
Tomorrow, I will share a quick batter bread to eat with your soup... ummmmmm... Gut Essen.