50 Simple Soups for the Slow Cooker - Lynn Alley [3]
When it comes to spices, I love to grind mine fresh just before adding them to a dish. This may sound formidable, but it is actually very easy and adds an extra dimension to your soups, since spices quickly lose their flavor when exposed to air, light, and heat. I buy spices from Penzeys, a wonderful online source for herbs and spices that has good prices, large volume, and rapid turnover, ensuring that your spices are flavorful and fresh. I store them in the freezer, then take out just the amount needed for any given recipe and grind it in a spice mill or electric coffee grinder just before using. It probably takes me no more than five minutes to gather spices and mill them for a recipe.
I also like to keep a healthy supply of fresh herb plants in my garden so that when I need a nip of rosemary, mint, thyme, or tarragon, I have only to step outside the kitchen door with a pair of scissors in hand. Fresh herbs I generally add at the last minute to retain their color, texture, and flavors.
Many of the recipes in this book call for ghee, or clarified butter. Because all of the milk solids have been removed, ghee can withstand cooking temperatures up to 485°F without smoking, so it is especially useful for sautéing and cooking. Buy it at any health food store or Indian market.
And last but not least, as any good lover of soups or stews knows, soup often tastes better the day after you make it. Somehow, the flavors seem to meld and gain depth when they sit overnight in the refrigerator. It’s almost as if the dish, like a good wine, ripens over time.
A Word about Beans
Although many authors, experts, and cooks soak beans before cooking them, I never do. Soaking them may reduce your cooking time, and it may help rid the soup of the polysaccharides that give some individuals gas, but by and large, soaking beans is not necessary.
Bean cooking times may vary, sometimes greatly, in accordance with the condition of the beans themselves. Beans that have recently been harvested, for instance, are likely to be in good condition and will hydrate fairly quickly; beans that have been sitting on the shelf for a long time may take a very long time to cook (and occasionally, as in the case of very old beans, they may never fully become tender at all). The remedy? Try to purchase beans from a source with a rapid turnover rate, and check the package. If the beans look chipped or there are “crumbs” in the package, chances are the beans have been sitting around for a long time.
Indispensible Tools of the Trade
Slow Cooker
Choosing the right slow cooker is important. For several years, I have used and recommended the inexpensive slow cookers from Home Depot, Walmart, and Target. The big, fancy, very expensive digital models have always seemed superfluous to me. A digital panel is just one more thing that can break, and up until recently, I have been unable to discern any significant difference in the finished product or the ease of cooking between the cheap models and the more expensive ones.
That is to say until I recently found an expensive slow cooker that I enjoy very much: the All-Clad slow cooker with an anodized aluminum insert. The All-Clad insert can be used directly on top of the stove, so you can brown your ingredients, then lift the insert very carefully into the slow cooker casing so that you never have to use any other pans for your slow cooked meal. It is very easy to clean (unlike some cookware that claims to be easy to clean but really isn’t). It has worked beautifully for me.
I keep several sizes of slow cooker on hand: a simple little Proctor Silex 1.5-quart oval slow cooker when I want to cook something for one or two people or melt small quantities of chocolate; a 3-quart round slow cooker for slightly larger quantities of soup, chili,