sweetie second chance soup

[snugglekitty]

The world of experimental cooking is a dangerous place. We all know this. When we are improvising, we may be lucky enough to wind up with a creation that is fabulous and delicious. Most of the time, we wind up with something that we'll still eat and not hate. But occaisionally we're not so lucky, right? Right. Well, that happened to me twice recently. Both times it was with soup, and both times, I was able to redeem it.



First, the Amazing Carrot Ginger Soup that wasn't. I was improvising from a recipe passed on to me by ceelove. "I'll use celery root instead of celery!" I said. "It'll have the same flavor but an even better texture! Oh, I guess I don't have too many carrots... well, I'll just use what I have." When I tried to blend this soup with the rotary blender, it did not wish to blend. mrpet stepped in to help. When he was done blending, he strained it to remove the unblendable bits. Despite all of this work, the soup had a very odd texture - soup should not be chewy, in my opinion. It also had a very odd flavor - just celery, basically. I left it in the fridge for a week and thought things over. Finally, I made a second batch of Amazing Carrot Ginger Soup, this time following the recipe exactly. Then I blended the two soups in a bowl and ate it. Not bad. So I put most of the rest of the too-much-celery soup in with the carrot soup, and it was fine. If I did this again, however, I would have made the second soup with no celery. But next time I'll just know better.


Second, I defrosted an unlabeled tupperware of Something from the freezer. I was guessing that it was veggie curry. It wasn't - it was a lamb stew I had made shortly after we had gotten our chest freezer, which had not come out well. I decided at the time to freeze it and wait and see. Once I defrosted it, I tried some to see if it was really that bad, and it was. It was thin and bland. I decided to strain it and cook down the broth, adding seasonings. 7j suggested garlic salt, and I added some ginger as well. Then I stirred the soup back together. I got intense compliments on it later that night.



Your soup can be saved! Especially if you have sweeties standing by to help.

Comments

[bluepapercup]

*laugh*

Ah, cooking experiments. Our kitchen has been full of those recently, ever since Ben bought himself a pressure cooker! The most hilarous one to me was the chili that was tasty but so spicy that it burned going both directions (if you know what I mean). We do save each other's cooking for time to time, but I generally avoid making soup for all the reasons you have listed above. :)

[lady-anemone.livejournal.com]

Cooking soup does not seem to be much like cooking other things, it's true. Perhaps that's why I'm so good at it.