It’s National Soup Month – drink up!

It’s getting colder, so to warm up I’m turning to lots of warm soups and comforting foods. This soup is hearty and full of flavor and texture. A perfect meal for those cold winter nights.

ingredients:
1 (14oz) kielbasa
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 (28 oz) can diced tomatoes
1 cup corn
1/2 cup peas
1 diced carrot
1 (15 oz) can garbanzo beans
2 (14 oz) cans chicken broth
1 teaspoon basil
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper

Chop the kielbasa into small pieces. In a large pot over medium high heat cook the kielbasa with the minced garlic for about 2 minutes.

Add the tomatoes, corn, peas and carrot. Pour in the chicken broth.

Add in the seasonings: basil, oregano, celery seed, cumin, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 20 minutes.

It’s National Soup Month! Is it because it’s cold or something because it was hovering around 80 here in LA for most of January…Anyway, to celebrate I’m posting soup!

Green tea noodles make this soup special. Then again so do lightsaber chopsticks.

ingredients:
1-1/2 cups low sodium chicken broth
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon mirin
1 bundle green tea udon noodles
1/4 cup roasted chicken
2 Tablespoons edamame, shelled
2 Tablespoons sweet corn
3-4 slices kamaboko
fried nori chips

In a large pot of boiling water, cook the green tea noodles until soft, approx 6 mins. Drain (do not rinse) and set aside.

In a saucepan heat the chicken broth, soy sauce and mirin on medium high until hot.

Pour the soup into a bowl, add the noodles and top with the chicken, edamame, sweet corn, kamaboko and nori chips. The beauty of this is you can put in anything you have around. I even added two gyoza for the heck of it.

As many ingredients as this has, this is still a fairly light soup – perfect for a cold day or…an 80 degree winter day at the beach.

I made this for my Foodbuzz 24x24x24 proposal: A Magic Treehouse dinner.

The saying goes, the air is thick like pea soup. Usually people think of thick legume soups and having to soak the beans and rinse and drain and then puree. Forget all that. This will take you NO TIME at all. Easiest dinner you’ll ever make.

ingredients:
1 onion, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 potatoes, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
2 cups green split peas
28 ounces chicken broth
1 pound kielbasa
salt
Fresh ground pepper

You won’t need to soak the peas overnight since they are so small, just rinse them thoroughly and drain them.

All you do is this: put the onions, carrots, celery, potatoes, garlic, split peas, chicken broth, cut up kielbasa in a crock pot. Season with salt and pepper. Turn it on low for 6-8 hours. Your soup is done.

You can’t beat that. I promise, you won’t even need to puree it, the peas will simply melt into a nice thickness, stir it all together and you’ll have a dense – almost stew-like soup. I love when you don’t have to do a lot of work for a meal. Season with a little more salt and pepper before serving, if you like. A fantastic dinner with some warm biscuits and a good book.

As requested by the Baby, I made this as part of ‘Max’s Dinner‘ from Where the Wild Things Are.

A nice hearty pork stew, but no hot dinner is complete without a few veggies. Paired with cake – this makes the perfect meal fit for the King of the Wild Things.

ingredients:
2-3 pound bone in pork shoulder
1 onion, chopped
2 potatoes
2 carrots
2 ribs of celery
10 ounces apple juice
1 cup water
1 clove garlic, minced
kosher salt
fresh ground pepper

Chop the onions and place them in the bottom of a crock pot. Place the pork shoulder in the center, rubbing it with the garlic, salt and seasoning with the pepper.

Peel and chop the potatoes, carrots and celery, placing them around the pork.

Pour the apple juice and water along the outside of the pot.

Turn the crock pot on low for 8 hours.

The pork will pull right off the bone, so that you can easily toss the bone away and you’re ready to serve!

Just as I bust out shorts for the kids, in comes Stormwatch. Oh well. It’ll be 75 again in a few days. L.A. is the Sybil of weather.

Why is this stew Hawaiian? I dunno, just every plate lunch place/hawaiian cookbook/mother/auntie makes it in Hawaii, plus you HAVE to eat it with rice – a Hawaii state law (not really) so there you go. So here’s my version. Rich, warm and flavorful – and a perfect meal even in the best of weather.

ingredients:
1-1/2 pounds stew meat
2 Tablespoons flour
4 Tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
5 cups water
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
1 (15 oz) can tomato sauce
1 (28 oz) can diced tomatoes
2 carrots
3 potatoes
2 stalks celery

Coat the stew meat with flour, and in a large pot, heat the olive oil and brown the meat. Add the onions and the garlic, for just a few minutes to soften the onion.

Add the water, salt, pepper, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, carrots, potatoes and celery. Stir well and let simmer for 1-1/2 hours until the meat and potatoes are nice and tender.

Serve with rice, of course!

Is it winter? Cause I’m wearing shorts. Sorry East Coast. That still doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a bowl of piping hot soup. Winter is winter.

ingredients:
6 slices bacon
2 Tablespoons butter
½ onion chopped
2 Tablespoons flour
32 ounces chicken broth
2 potatoes
1 (16 oz) bag frozen corn
1 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon salt
Pepper

Cook bacon in a large pot over medium high heat until crisp. Personally, I like to pre-cut my bacon into small pieces, it crisps up faster and then you don’t have to chop it at the end. Drain and set aside.

Pour off the bacon grease from the pot. Add the butter, and the onions. Saute until soft. Add the flour and cook for a few minutes.

Cut the potatoes into small chunks. Add in the chicken broth and the potatoes to the onion mixture and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook until the potatoes are tender, about ten minutes.

Add the heavy cream and the corn. Stir together well, then add the cooked bacon back in. Simmer for another 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

This is a tasty satisfying soup and really, who can deny the powers of bacon?

When I was a kid I always remember there being a bag of Chicharrones aka fried pork rinds in the house. While my family loved to snack on them, I find them to be a great accompaniment to my Mexican Chicken Soup.

ingredients:
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 onion, diced
1 bell pepper, diced
2 chicken breast halves, bone in
1 (28 ounce) can diced tomatoes
3 (14 ounce) can chicken broth
1-1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1-1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1-1/2 cups corn

Toppings:
2 roma tomatoes, diced
2 avocados, diced
Chicharrones

In a large pot** sauté the garlic, onion and bell pepper in the olive oil. When soft, add the chicken broth, diced tomatoes, and the 2 chicken breast halves.

Cut the chicken down to the bone (not through), so that it’s still attached, but in smaller pieces. That way it will cook faster. I like the chicken bone-in because it’s more flavorful when it simmers down. At the end you’ll just pull out the bones and skin.

Add the cumin, chili powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper.

Bring to a boil, then simmer for 1-1/2 hours. Stir in the corn and serve.

I like to serve this soup in bowls, over rice – and topped with diced tomatoes, avocados and of course, chicharrones!

The kids love this dish, I think it’s the warmth of the soup and the crunch of the chicharrones. Perfect for winter, though our winter here in SoCal is 75 degrees. Sorry folks!

**My Le Creuset French Oven. The love of my life. Read more about it, here.

I am a big fan of Morimoto, and not just his penmanship:

No, I love his creativity. While his cookbook seems complicated, if you dig deep, you’ll find the recipes are fairly simple with complicated flavors.

This is my simplified version of ‘Hayashi Stew’ from Morimoto’s New Art of Japanese Cooking. It’s like a simple boeuf bourguignon – all meat, all flavor.

ingredients:
1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
1 large onion, sliced
4 Tablespoons butter
1-1/2 pounds boneless beef chuck
1 garlic clove, chopped
1 cup red wine
3 Tablespoon ketchup
3 cups beef broth
1 cup water
1/4 cup all purpose flour
salt
pepper

In a large pot, heat the oil and add the onion and saute. Stir until the onion is a lovely brown. Remove the onions and set aside.

In the same pot, melet TWO Tablespoons of the butter. Add the meat and the garlic, turning to brown. Again – set aside. (This is the last time you’ll have to aside, I promise.)

Pour the red wine into the pot and bring to a boil, scraping up the meat bits on the bottom.

Add the ketchup, then return the onions and beef back into the pot.

In Morimoto’s recipe he calls for a very elaborate Shanton Broth to be used, but here in down-to-earth-land, I don’t have time to be boiling down four different kinds of meat for FOUR hours. While I KNOW his tastes better because of his broth…no. The new season of Oprah has started and so I am just going to suggest you do as I do and just use a simple beef broth here.

To the meat and onions add the beef broth (~wink) and the water and bring to a simmer. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 1-1/2 hours.

In a small saucepan melt the remaining 2 Tablespoons of butter over medium heat and whisk in the flour. Cook – stirring for about 3 minutes. Ladle in about 2 cups of the stew broth INTO the saucepan to temper the flour mixture – boil while whisking until thick and smooth. Stir the thickened liquid back into the stew.

Cover and simmer for another 30 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Serve with white rice.

This stew is quite simple with very minimal ingredients. Not a veggie in sight. It’s warm, hearty and has the loveliest of flavors. Again I’m sure a heftier base broth would be better, but this is pretty darn good as simplified.

If you recall the Easter ham incident of 2010, well O.G. of course, ended up dumping that ham bone on me. I decided to make a very quick and easy soup out of it.

ingredients:
1 ham bone with/meat
1 cup onion, diced
1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes with juice
2 cups chicken stock
1 cup water
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 cups green beans
1 cup corn

If you are dumb like me and accidently bought WHOLE tomatoes instead of crushed (grr), simply take some clean kitchen shears and cut the tomatoes up right in the can. Problem solved!

Put the ham bone, onion, tomatoes, chicken stock and water into a slow cooker. Add the garlic powder, salt and pepper.

Cover, and cook on low for 5 hours. Take out the ham bone and carve off the meat and add it back into the soup. Add the beans and the corn, cook for another 1-2 hours.

I wanted to come up with something simple and flavorful. I think you’ll be surprised at how tasty this soup is, with very little ingredients.

I took the soup to O.G’s house and served it with Sausage + Onion muffins. A nice warm dinner!

This was part of the ‘Cajun Birthday Lunch’
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When I don’t have a lot of time I make ‘Cheater’s Jambalaya’ in a crock pot. But reading John Besh’s awesome My New Orleans cookbook inspired me to take one for the team and stand up at the stove for a bit. However unlike his recipe suggests I did not use a giant ‘spade’ to stir my pot. Yikes. That’s a lot of jambalaya.

ingredients:
1 pound of bacon, chopped
4 boneless skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1″ cubes
1-1/2 pounds smoked sausage, diced
3 onions, diced
2 bell peppers, seeded and diced
5 stalks of celery, diced
5 cloves of garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 dried bay leaf
1-1/2 Tablespoons paprika
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1-1/2 teaspoons celery seed
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
1-1/2 teaspoons fresh ground black pepper
3 cups canned crushed tomatoes
3 cups chicken stock
2 pounds cooked shrimp, peeled and deveined

Heat a large stock pot cook on medium high. Cook the bacon until slightly crisp. Pull the bacon out to drain, and set aside. Make sure you leave the fatty oil in the pot. Oh yes. You will need that.

Now add the chicken (still on medium high) and the smoked sausage – cook until the chicken is browned. Add the onion and cook until carmelized a bit.

Then add the bell peppers, celery and garlic. Cook until softened, just about 5 minutes.

Add the thyme, bay leaf, paprika, cayenne, salt, pepper and celery seed. Cook and stir well, about 4 minutes.

Turn up the heat to high and add the tomatoes and chicken stock. Once it reaches a boil, lower the heat and simmer for about 30+ minutes. Check and stir now and again, you really want the flavors to mix up.

Remember that bacon you cooked and set aside? Yeah, throw that back in and while you’re at it add the shrimp and simmer for another 10 minutes. Serve over rice and you are ready to EAT! (Also goes REALLY good with Sweet Cornbread Muffins…)