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Tiffany Hanssen: Well, we haven't seen much snow this winter. We've experienced quite a few cold days with temperatures dipping into the 30s, even into the 20s some nights. It's the perfect time for a steaming hot bowl of soup. Of course, there's a variety of options to choose from. Green curry lentil, matzo ball soup, creamy tomato bisque, miso soup, of course, the classic chicken noodle. The list goes on. Sometimes the right choice just comes down to nostalgia. A lot of us have fond memories of sitting in the kitchen or sick in bed as a loved one brought us a warm bowl of soup, and maybe some of those were original recipes.

Today, we'll speak to someone who literally wrote a book on soup. Our guest, Kathy Gunst, is the author of more than a dozen cookbooks, including Soup Swap: Comforting Recipes to Make and Share. This book comes with more than 60 soup recipes such as five mushroom soup and Vietnamese-style asparagus soup. She's also a James Beard Award-winning food journalist and the Resident Chef for NPR's award-winning show here and now. Kathy, welcome to All Of It.

Kathy Gunst: Thank you so much. Great to be here.

Tiffany Hanssen: Thank you. Listeners, of course, we want you to participate in this conversation. What are your favorite soups to make during this cold winter season? Are you more of a canned soup person? Do you make soup from scratch? How do you make your stock? Everybody has their secrets. Let us in on yours. You can give us a call. 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. You can also reach us on social media at All Of It, WNYC. Kathy, how did you get interested in soup enough to write a book about it?

Kathy Gunst: Well, Maine is my home state, and it is quite cold there. Many years ago, a friend called and said, "I have an idea. Winter is way too long. What about on the second Sunday of every month we get together and have a soup swap party?" I thought, "That sounds kind of racy. What do you mean?"

The idea is pretty simple. Everybody brings a pot of soup, you have a party, and at the end of the party, you bring your old yogurt containers and mason jars, and you go home with all the leftovers. You cook once, but you end up with whatever, 5, 10, 12 homemade soups. We did this for several years, and boy, everybody's soups just got better and better, and they came from all over the world. It just made me realize what a enormous, comforting, wonderful topic soup is, so Soup Swap was born.

Tiffany Hanssen: I love the idea of a soup swap. It seems like everybody has a recipe that's their go-to recipe. Mine is an African peanut stew that I always make. People ask for it. Yes. Do you have one that's your go-to?

Kathy Gunst: I was afraid you were going to ask me that because it just depends. I'm the kind of cook that goes to the market without a list. I want to see what's there. This time of year, you see a lot of root vegetables and you think it's incredibly boring, and you think, "Please, spring, hurry up. I need to see fresh asparagus and greens and artichokes and all these wonderful foods," but you can make fabulous soups from winter root vegetables.

I have one where you use anything you can get your hands on, carrots, celery roots, celery, leaks, onions, and you roast them. What that does is it caramelizes these root winter vegetables and the natural sugars come out and then you literally just take it from the roasting pan, throw it into a pot of stock, vegetable, chicken, beef, simmer it for a while, top it with a winter parsley pesto, and boy, winter is suddenly a lot more colorful and sweet and really satisfying for a soup that's quite simple.

Tiffany Hanssen: Wow. That sounds fantastic. Look, I want to bring our listeners in here. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. We're talking about soup. Do you have a go-to soup recipe? Give us a call or find us on social media at All Of It. I'd like to go to Sharon in Brooklyn. Sharon, are you there?

Sharon: Hi. My favorite soup is something that my grandmother made from South Carolina. It's lima bean and ham soup. She used a lot of beans in her soup, and it was good because I use it as a meat substitute with my granddaughter now, and she likes it. Legumes, dried beans were a staple in South Carolina and North Carolina, but I remember the smell when I was walking down Jefferson Avenue in Brooklyn and I knew that my grandmother was making my favorite soup.

Tiffany Hanssen: Kathy, a ham soup, what do you use as a stock in a ham soup? I'm showing my ignorance here a little bit.

Kathy Gunst: Well, first of all, that soup sounds wonderful. I love that memory. Anytime that I cook a ham, which is not that often, the bone is like gold. I always save it. If I'm not ready to make a quick stock, I'll throw it in my freezer. A ham bone or any kind beef bones, not expensive things but chin bones and marrow bones and different types of bones that the butcher might sell you for your dog, literally, those make the best stocks.

A ham stock is as simple as taking a ham bone, putting in a pot, throwing some water on, carrot, celery, onion, peppercorn, salt, and you have the basis of a light but meaty broth, and then you can add peas or any type of legume, as the listener said. What's so interesting to me is how much soup brings out these memories and childhood and grandmothers.

Tiffany Hanssen: Yes, I was going to ask you that. It really seems to me that for a lot of folks, their favorite recipe has a lot of emotion and nostalgia attached to it.

Kathy Gunst: Exactly.

Tiffany Hanssen: Is that your experience as well?

Kathy Gunst: Oh, very much so. When we first started the soup swap, everybody brought this-- there were a lot of tomato soups and chicken noodle soups, and boy, there was nothing wrong with that, but it was very interesting to see how it morphed into Chinese hot and sour soup or sopa de lima from Mexico and on and on, how people stretch their wings a bit. I grew up on Campbell's tomato soup, and for me--

Tiffany Hanssen: As did I. [laughs]

Kathy Gunst: Yes, pure nostalgia. In the book, I created a recipe, a winter recipe that you can do with good quality canned tomatoes or in the summer with garden tomatoes, and then I topped the tomato soup with grilled cheese croutons. I'm always looking for new twists on old favorites.

Tiffany Hanssen: I want to get back to this issue of the broth. We were talking about the ham broth with Sharon. I want to bring Jeff in Astoria into the conversation. Hi, Jeff.

Jeff: Hi.

Tiffany Hanssen: You have a tip for us on making broth?

Jeff: Yes. I have a lot of friends that are into bone broth, and they always go and buy it. If you have a slow cooker, the easiest thing is you just throw everything in the pot, cover it, and let it go for four to six hours. It saves you a ton of money. It's so much cheaper than going out and buying broth.

Tiffany Hanssen: Kathy, how do you feel about that?

Kathy Gunst: I think that's a great tip. It's a big thing now, bone broth, chicken bone broth. There's not really that much difference in these boxed and canned varieties. The truth about making stock is that it's simple and people look at me and go, "Really? I don't think so." It is as simple as taking a chicken, putting it in a pot, throwing some vegetables around it, water, peppercorn, bay leaf, you walk away. You go do live your life, and an hour later, you have homemade chicken stock. I do this once a month. I put it in the freezer, I put it in the fridge, and anytime I want to make soup, I have this gorgeous homemade base for any soup that I want to make.

I also do a really cool thing, which I call recycled stock. Every time I'm cooking, you peel an onion, you trim a leek, you shave off the outside of a cabbage. I keep all the leaves and trimmings and ends, throw them in a bag, and put them in the freezer. When I have enough, I put all these vegetable scraps in a big old stockpot, water, celery, a carrot, and I get this spectacular vegetable broth. I actually think the store-bought vegetable broths are the weakest. They have this strange color and they never--

Tiffany Hanssen: I want to bring Dan, and he's got a question about these store-bought stocks and broths. Dan, you've got a question for Kathy?

Dan: Yes. Hi. Sorry to get to the nuts and bolts of this. My wife makes a lot of soup, and we don't really have much room in our refrigerator to save broth and all that, so I buy quite a bit of broth in aseptic boxes when sometimes they're on sale. There's chicken broth and then there's chicken stock, and then I also see now they're making various kinds of bone broth, so I was wondering if the guest could talk about what the differences in those are. The broth is usually a clear liquid with actually not that much flavor and the stock is cloudier, but when you look at the ingredients, they basically look the same, so what's up with that?

Tiffany Hanssen: [chuckles] All right, Kathy. What's up with that?

Kathy Gunst: That's such a good question, and you really actually answered it already. Broths tend to be lighter and have fewer ingredients than a stock, but when you read the ingredients on these boxed or canned broths and stocks, they're the exact same thing. It does get down to how much they boil it, how long it cooks. They're great to have as backup, but I would urge people to try to-- even if you make it once you, will have an incredible amount of stock to throw into your freezer, but a lot of this is just semantics.

Tiffany Hanssen: I think the thing that some people worry about with store-bought stocks or broths is the salt content.

Kathy Gunst: Exactly.

Tiffany Hanssen: That's an issue, right?

Kathy Gunst: Ver high sodium. It's a big issue, very high sodium. This is the biggest reason why I like to make my own stock. I control what goes in it. This is really the truth behind homemade cooking versus grocery store shopping because you will control how much salt do you want. Do you love an onion flavor? Do you hate onion? Do you love celery? You control the balance of flavor, and these store-bought stocks tend to be very high in sodium, and I would say to look out for a low-sodium product.

Tiffany Hanssen: I want to get back to this notion of soup evoking emotions and nostalgia in folks. We have Deanna in Sheepshead Bay. Hi Deanna.

Deanna: Hi there. Can you hear me?

Tiffany Hanssen: I can. What's your favorite soup?

Deanna: Great. Growing up as a kid, I guess I was a weird kid, but I really loved packaged borscht or instant borscht. It came in a white packet with a lady on it, and I was partially raised by my great aunt who barely spoke English. She came from Poland, so she made me a lot of Polish recipes, but one of her shortcuts was this packaged borscht.

As I became an adult, I was looking for that flavor again. I, same just as the last caller said, looked at the package, and I was like, "I could probably make this better." I looked into it and I actually looked into making a vegan version of borscht, and it is probably the most delicious soup I can imagine, and it when it's homemade, it really sings. A secret to that is actually making some homemade beet pickles beforehand, and just as a soup called cools off, a little bit right before you serve, you actually pour this viscous beet brine into the borscht, and it's amazing.

Tiffany Hanssen: Fantastic. Kathy, we have another borscht question. I'm just going to hop right to it. Edith in Manhattan. Edith, you also have borscht on the brain.

Edith: Oh, yes. Mine is a bit of a different-- you can hear me, right?

Tiffany Hanssen: I can hear you.

Edith: Okay, sorry. Mine is a little bit of a different nostalgia, although I have many soup nostalgias like pea soup with ham from my mom. It was wonderful. I came to New York City, and when I was in my mid-20s and I got stuck here. I've never left since, but I first was in the East Village and someone living in a room in someone's apartment, but we would go out dancing at the Limelight. I don't know if you remember that.

Tiffany Hanssen: Oh, yes. I did that. There was borscht at the end of it or what?

Edith: Then we would go after that to Avenue A, which was near where I lived, and they had those Polish, Teresa's, and then, of course, Vaselka, all those restaurants, and we'd have a bowl of borscht, and it's just a wonderful memory for me, but I've never learned how to make it myself. I tried once and it was a failure

Tiffany Hanssen: Yes. Kathy, any advice for a first-time borscht maker?

Kathy Gunst: I love all these borscht stories. You can make it with meat or without. It's quite easy to do a vegetarian version. I love the idea of pickling beets and throwing the brine into the soup. You just want to go to the farmer's market and buy the freshest beets you can find because it's going to add so much flavor and color. It's actually not that complicated a recipe, and it is so hearty for a cold winter day, and it's one of my favorites as well. I just love it, with fresh dill and sour cream on top.

Tiffany Hanssen: Fantastic. Kathy, we're just going to take a quick break. We're talking with Kathy Gunst, the author of more than a dozen cookbooks, including Soup Swap: Comforting Recipes to Make and Share. You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. We'll have more on the way in just a few minutes.

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Tiffany Hanssen: This is All Of It. I'm Tiffany Hanssen, in for Allison Stewart. We are talking soup this hour, recipes to stay warm as we head into one of the coldest months of the winter. We're talking with James Beard award-winning food journalist, Kathy Gunst, about soup, the nostalgia of soup, your favorite soup recipes. Of course, we're taking your calls. 212-433-WNYC, 212 433-9692. You can find us on social media at All Of It, and I want to jump to Amy in Manhattan. Kathy, Amy has something called a perpetual soup.

Amy: Yes, hi. Pleased I'm on. I haven't been able to get through for, I think, over a year.

Tiffany Hanssen: We're glad you're here.

Amy: Thank you. After you've made a soup, whether it's something you bought or that you made from scratch, originally, there's-- I'm trying to remember the name of in some old ovens instead of a fourth burner, there's actually a hole with a pot that was built to fit in it. You could keep something being heated for literally perpetually of there was-- oh, Dutch oven, I think. Is that right?

Tiffany Hanssen: Kathy, have you heard about perpetual soup?

Kathy Gunst: No, I've never heard it called that, but I think that you touch on something which is that soup is so adaptable and you can eat it one day and then maybe add lemon and an herb to it the next day, and then you could add some leftover pasta, and a cut up cabbage. It just keeps on going, so perpetual soup, sure.

Tiffany Hanssen: You mentioned adding leftovers. I did a thing. Ater Thanksgiving, I took our leftover roasted vegetables from Thanksgiving and I made a soup out of it. My biggest challenge was trying to figure out, because it already had some spices in it. What kind of advice can you give for folks who may be spice challenged?

Kathy Gunst: Well, you can't go wrong with fresh time and good parsley, rosemary is a great winter herb. It depends what the soup is. I always advise adding a little bit at the beginning and then waiting until the soup has simmered for a few hours or an hour so that you can taste it and see what flavors have come out before you decide, "You know what? This really needs something, it needs a dash of hot sauce, or it needs the sourness of a lemon or a lime," and then you go from there.

Thanksgiving is so fabulous because you have this massive turkey carcass. When you've roasted a chicken or a turkey, do not throw that carcass out because that makes gorgeous stock. I have a freezer full of turkey stock that I made the day after Thanksgiving, and then I do a Greek avgolemono soup with lemon, and fresh dill, and Turkey bits, and oh, it's so delicious.

Tiffany Hanssen: We have someone else who has a question about flavor profiles. Danielle in Baltimore. Danielle, you're asking about smokey flavor. Is that right?

Danielle: Yes. Hi, thank you so much. Great show.

Tiffany Hanssen: Thank you.

Danielle: Soup is the best.

Tiffany Hanssen: Soup, go soup.

Danielle: Growing up, my mom used to make this delicious split pea soup, and she would put slices of hot dogs, like kosher hot dogs in it, and it would just add the delicious smoky flavor, and you just see so many recipes that want ham hawk or that delicious smoky ham flavor, but what are other ways you can get that smoky flavor without using ham or hot dogs?

Kathy Gunst: That's a great question. I like to use the oven and roast, say, members of the onion family, garlic, and leeks, and onions at a very high temperature like 450 degrees, tossed with just a little bit of olive oil till it almost gets crispy and it takes on a smoky flavor, and when you add that to the soup it, almost feels meaty. The other thing if you want to avoid meat is to roast mushrooms, fresh ones, dried ones, and they will add a real meatiness, not only to the texture, but it's almost like there is meat in the soup, and if you roast them first, you can get a smokiness out of them.

Tiffany Hanssen: How do you feel about that stuff called liquid smoke?

Kathy Gunst: I don't feel that good about it to tell you the truth.

Tiffany Hanssen: What is it?

Kathy Gunst: It's artificial something.

Tiffany Hanssen: All right, so better maybe if you're looking for a non-meat alternative to go with mushrooms. Any particular type of mushroom?

Kathy Gunst: Well, something that's interesting is that dried mushrooms, which you see in a lot of Italian delis and specialty food stores. They look like they're expensive, but it's intensified flavor. If you take four dried mushrooms and you soak them in not quite boiling water, not only do they plump up and add enormous flavor to soup, but you then have an instant mushroom stock. Just that water that the mushroom was soaking in will add a beautiful mushroomy flavor to any vegetable, meat, fish soup. It's quite extraordinary how one step, pouring quite warm water over dried mushrooms, will just give you a big flavor pow.

Tiffany Hanssen: We're supposed to get some colder temperatures, I think, next week. Eric in Manhattan has a good soup for cold weather, it sounds like. Hi, Eric.

Eric: Hi. I wanted to sing the praises of probably my favorite soup, which came out of a Hungarian cookbook that was published in the '80s and is tragically out of print now. Just wonderful sauerkraut soup. Hungarians make soup from sauerkraut and add paprika and sour cream at the end and smoked sausage. It's not quite stew, it really stays soup, but man, is it warming, hearty, and so delicious.

Tiffany Hanssen: Wow. That sounds fantastic. Kathy, have you heard of that?

Kathy Gunst: I have heard of it. A lot of people are really into kimchi stew and kimchi soups, and very similar, the idea of using this brine pickled vegetable. I know it sounds odd, but I bet it's fabulous. I'm going to actually try it.

Tiffany Hanssen: I wonder, as you look through the list of the soups in your book, Soups Swap, what's one you'd love to share with listeners?

Kathy Gunst: Oh, boy. Where do I start?

Tiffany Hanssen: A miso soup? I would love a good miso soup. Can we talk about miso soup?

Kathy Gunst: Let's talk about miso soup, which is really one of the simplest soups in the book. You want to start with a good quality miso, a white miso, or something that doesn't have a super strong flavor. I like to add scallions and tofu. I make it for breakfast, which is a traditional Japanese thing, but I just use water sometimes or you can make a very simple broth from seaweed.

There's so many things you can make stock from, it's extraordinary. Miso soup is so warming. I love it. Oh boy. Where do I start? An escarole and white bean soup, escarole looks like a big head of lettuce. It's fairly inexpensive, very hearty, and with white beans and grated parmesan on top, that will warm any night.

Tiffany Hanssen: Do you make that with a chicken stock? I'm just wondering about this difference. I don't eat a lot of meat. I'm wondering, the difference between chicken stock and veggie stock. Are they truly interchangeable?

Kathy Gunst: They are. Absolutely. Again, if you're using one of the box veggie stocks, you're going to need to pump up the flavors, because I find there's not that much, or better yet, you're going to start saving your vegetable scraps and make your own. Almost all these soups can be made vegetarian, in some case, vegan, by simply substituting a vegetable stock.

Tiffany Hanssen: Are there nono vegetables for vegetable broth? I'm thinking like fennel, maybe that would overwhelm your broth.

Kathy Gunst: That's a really good question. Fennel, not so much. Things like cabbage or Brussels sprouts, brassica families, they're very strong and they will take over a stock. You really want to balance it. Onions and celery and carrots are much milder and should be the base, and then you can add anything you want. You wouldn't want to add a whole head of fennel or cups of fennel fronds. Again, a lot of cabbage leaves or Brussels sprout leaves really going to take over your stock.

Tiffany Hanssen: I want to go to Jason in Brooklyn. Hi, Jason. You have a good vegetarian option that you like. What is it?

Jason: I do. I actually have a beer store, but I used to serve food also, and I had this lentil soup that I would regularly have people call me back and just to double-check that there wasn't any meat in it because it had smoked paprika.

Kathy Gunst: That's a free tip.

Jason: Yes, smoked paprika. It did have a little bit of butter in it, otherwise, it was vegan, and you got to use the black lentils.

Tiffany Hanssen: Great. Another great vegetarian option. Smoked paprika may be adding some of that smokey flavor.

Kathy Gunst: Exactly. Smoked paprika primarily comes from Spain, and it's got a very rich flavor, smokey, also tiny bit spicy and also sweet simultaneously. It's a really interesting spice. Keep it in your refrigerator and it'll last for a while.

Tiffany Hanssen: If you're making a veggie broth, is there an herb profile that you go to frequently? I'm assuming the smoked paprika would come in when you're making the soup, not when you're making the broth.

Kathy Gunst: I think so. I think it could overwhelm a stock. It really depends what I'm doing. If I'm making a ramen-type soup, I'm going to add lots of fresh ginger and scallions. If I'm making a minestrone, I might add some basil or thyme, or rosemary. If I'm making sopa de lima, which is with fresh lime and chicken, I'm going to be squeezing fresh lime juice and lemon zest in there, maybe a little oregano. It's very flexible, but you want to think about the flavor profile of the soup before you choose an herb, and it's not going to ruin it, but you want to just think about what you want that end flavor to be like.

Tiffany Hanssen: I want to go to Julian, who also makes broth in a crockpot. That seems to be a trend. Hi, Julian.

Julian: Hi. I discovered this weird broth that I came up with by being a man in a hurry and cooking my meals in a crockpot. I got, for example, poultry or meat, and then I would layer with layers of onion, which where you can add salt to your preference. Then I would like completely fill up the crockpot. I would add probably slices of carrot maybe. Then I would have that like for six hours. By the end, you come out with this huge broth. You don't add water, it's just the water that comes out of the onion. Then it's wonderful for making, for example, rice or pasta with it, or for just having that broth.

Tiffany Hanssen: Kathy, how do you feel about that? Thank you very much. Kathy, how do you feel about that?

Kathy Gunst: Sounds delicious. Really, that is the essence of what soup is. It's layering of flavors and a long, slow simmer. Doing it in a crock pot is great, doing it on a wood stove is great, doing it on a traditional stove. Some of these soups happen really quickly, but some of them, the flavors just developed into a deeper, richer, more evolved kind of thing if it cooks slowly and you let it sit overnight, so sure. Crockpot. Why not?

Tiffany Hanssen: Kathy, I think that's a great place to leave it. Gosh, we appreciate your time today so much.

Kathy Gunst: Thanks so much for having me, and I loved all the stories.

Tiffany Hanssen: Kathy Gunst is the author of more than a dozen cookbooks, including Soup Swap: Comforting Recipes to Make and Share. Well, an 11 billion train station years in the making has finally opened up. We'll talk about Grand Central Madison next, as well as other transportation news with WNYC reporter, Steven Nessen. This is All Of It. Stay with us.

 

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