When four working mothers faced the daily dinner dilemma, they came up with a creative solution: Soup Club.
"Soup is hard to screw up," said Tina Carr, who joined forces with her New York neighbors, Courtney Allison, Caroline Laskow and Julie Peaco*ck, for once-a-month cooking and delivery duties.
Feeding friendship and their families, the Soup Club does double duty. "We're creating connections. There is no better way to do that than by food sharing," said Laskow.
Sharing the lessons they've learned, the women have written "The Soup Club Cookbook" ($25, Clarkson Potter), featuring soups for all seasons, plus sides and salads. With four husbands and 10 children among them, they've tested each of these recipes on their own families and learned a few things. Once a month each person takes a turn making soup, spreading out cooking duties. By the same token, each member also gets soup deliveries three times a month.
Three of the women, Carr, Laskow and Peaco*ck, spoke by phone to share how others can create their own soup club.
Each week, they add new blog posts, tips and recipes at thesoupclubcookbook.com.
Q.What is Soup Club? How did it get started?
Laskow: We're neighbors in New York City. With work and families, we were getting busier and busier, and we wanted to stay connected. We also were always having that dinner conversation about getting it on the table every day. We realized we can still connect by making dinner for each other. Once a week, it would be a big pot of soup delivered to the other three families. We'd take turns, so three times a month we'd have dinner delivered to our doors. Once a month we'd be making soup for others.
Q.How do people get started at home? What are the essentials?
Carr: You do need a bigger pot. That is something we learned quickly. Our recipes are written to yield 8 to 9 quarts, and you really do need a 12- to 14-quart pot so you can mix and add and not risk spilling things over the side. You can get those at restaurant supply stores.
The other essential item is an immersion blender. If you read the book, we include a lot of purees. They're seemingly very labor intensive, but an immersion blender will save you so much time because you can roughly cut your ingredients and stick your immersion blender in to puree to your desired consistency. And it takes no space. We're still cooking in our small kitchens.
Peaco*ck: Do not overthink it. Just make your soup. People will appreciate eating food that has been prepared for them.
Q.What do you recommend for packaging and delivery?
Carr: You need strong, tempered jars. We've gone with glass one-quart jars. We keep two as the cook, then deliver two to each family. So we have a total of eight jars. Whatever you deliver it in, there needs to be a sturdy holder of the jars. These are not necessarily things that are intuitive from the get-go, and we've worked it out over the course of our own food sharing.
Laskow: A canning jar will take your hot liquids, and definitely a wide mouth. A quart or one liter jar is a good size for delivery, storing and will fit in the dishwasher. Wide mouth is important because you'll be ladling. Canning jars also don't hold the flavors, they clean up and they're not porous.
Peaco*ck: Also, if you're heating up the soup in a microwave you can just leave it in the glass jar, but we'd never recommend heating the soup in plastic. You should transfer it to a glass bowl or other container.
Q.What is the goal of The Soup Club Cookbook?
Peaco*ck: It is a guidebook to food sharing. We want people to get in the habit of being comfortable with sharing food with each other, parents at school, friends, colleagues. Food is a good point of connection, and we want people to have that connection on a regular basis.
Anyone can make soup. You don't have to be a chef. The four of us have not gone to culinary school. We're not accomplished chefs. Soup doesn't need to be complicated.
Q.What are some basic rules for starting out?
Laskow: The single most important thing is that people want to do it and they commit to it. It is only once a month that you commit to soup duty.
Also, having a geographic convergence. We live near one another. Our editor is doing a soup club at her office, which is great because co-workers are at the same place every day. Parents could do a school drop-off. Make it relatively easy to get the soup into each other's hands.
Q.What's the biggest challenge in making a larger batch soup?
Carr: That's a big part of why we found a need for a cookbook like this. You'd think it would be easy to scale up, but it is easy to underestimate how long you need to bring a pot of soup to a boil, how much salt to add, how many onions you need. All of our recipes can be halved.
Peaco*ck: You just have to be prepared that it takes a little longer cooking at this quantity
Q.Any tips for freezing soup?
Peaco*ck: Soups that have milk or cream in them do not freeze well. Otherwise, freeze them in plastic containers. Some people use Ziploc bags and put them flat so they can stack them up. You also might double bag it so there's no risk of spilling. Baggies or plastic containers are also good for single servings to pop it out of the freezer for lunch.
Q.What are some ways to change things up with toppings?
Carr: We love toppings. We really started upping the ante with the addition of different toppings for our soup deliveries. My 9-year-old loves creme fraiche, and if I give him that he'll eat almost any soup. Pestos energize and liven up a lot of soups. In the book, we have a variety of pestos. The classic is the basil pine nut with cheese, olive oil and garlic, but pestos can be anything you blend with seasonal vegetables available at some point, like kale and parsley, lovage. We have a variety of croutons, even tofu croutons.
Q.Are there cautionary tales, any lessons to be learned?
Laskow: I had a soup that turned into a stew once, and I think the title of that week's drop-off was, "Sometimes the lentils win." I was trying to make a lentil soup and the lentils just kept absorbing the liquid. It was not a soup. There was no broth. It was tasty, but it was not a soup. So the delivery came with an explanation.
Also, manage your expectations. Cooking for quantity and allowing time for the soup to cool off sufficiently is important. It is hard to deliver piping hot soup. Early on, we had a couple lid explosions.
Q.Should we reheat soup on the stove top or in a microwave?
Laskow: Whatever works. But if you're doing more than one serving, it is honestly faster on the stove. For lunchtime at work, microwaving is great. You also may need to add a little broth or water, especially for soups that have grains or beans.
About Kristine M. Kierzek
Kristine M.Kierzek is a Milwaukee-based freelance writer. She regularly writes Chef Chat and Fork. Spoon. Life. columns for Fresh.
