Miss Jo Says # 5

I like to make soups and sauces. Soups are great for using leftovers and they taste so nice on cold, rainy days. Forget about cold soups though, that just sounds yucky. The words "soup" and "cold" do not go together at all. One of my favorite soups to make is tomato soup. It is so easy and tastes so much better than the canned stuff, that once you make it, you will never buy Campbells again. That is one of the benefits from moving to Germany. I couldn't find things that I was used to buying in the states and had to learn how to make them from scratch, like canned soups, tortillas, refried beans, and so on.

Tomato Soup
1 onion diced
1 tbls. butter
1 large can of tomatoes
milk or heavy cream
chicken boullion

Saute your onions in the butter. When soft, add the tomatoes and cook for 5-10 min. Puree with your immersion hand mixer. Add milk or heavy cream to your desired consistency. Some people like thick soups, others prefer thin. Flavor with 1-2 tsp. of boullion. Serve when hot. Float some croutons on it if you like. Add fresh basil, chives, grated zucchini, or some fresh parmesan as a garnish. I do like the taste of heavy cream though, it just adds a richer flavor to any soup or sauce that you make.

I use a lot of sauces at work, especially cheese sauce for mac and cheese or au-gratin potatoes, or for making sausage gravy or creamed beef. I will always be grateful to the Army for teaching me how to make gravy and creamed beef. Until I went to the Army cook school, I only knew the way my mom had made gravy or thickened sauces. She would stand there, mixing up flour and water, straining out the lumps, and usually not very successfully. Then it would be a search and destroy mission with the gravy, trying to find any lumps that had escaped the original mixing. Tupperware even makes a special cup for mixing flour and water. Why, why, why??? When it is so easy to make a roux with some kind of fat and flour and you never get lumps. The Army cooks even have a nickname for this kind of thickening method of flour and water, but it's rude and I won't print it here.

I pretty much use the rule of thumb of 1 tblsp of fat to each tblsp of flour. Brown it for however long you like. White sauces don't need to cook too long before adding milk. Better Homes and Garden Cook book has a basic white sauce recipe that I use. I just add my cheese, or lemon juice, or chicken flavoring. If I am making a cream soup, I will go ahead and saute my onions, or celery or mushrooms, or bacon in the fat before adding the flour. Milk is the usual liquid, but you can use broth of any kind. This is great for using up any kind of leftover veggies or meat.
Saute some onions and or bacon, add your flour to make the roux, add your liquid of choice and then the veggies, etc. If you want, go ahead and blend it with your immersion hand mixer. This is great for broccoli, cauiflower, zucchini, carrots, and so. This is sneaky way of getting veggies into your kids too. Just don't use this machine on potatoes, you will get a gluey mess. If I already have a soup or stew that needs thickening, I will make a roux and then add it to the liquid. This will work for potato soup too.

If you are making sausage gravy or creamed beef, add a couple tblsps of butter to the meat as it browns. Add only enough flour to absorb all the fat. If you put too much flour in, then add a bit more butter. After stirring and cooking for 5 min. or so, add your milk, stirring constantly. I like to be conservative, adding just enough milk to get it mixed and then adding more as it thickens. If making sausage gravy, I like to add lots of sage and some ground red pepper or hot sauce. Creamed beef gets lots of Worcestershire sauce and I also saute onions with the meat.

I taught my husband how to make these and this is a guy that did not know how to cook anything before we got married. He does a fabulous job of it now! He makes sausage gravy, creamed beef, lasagna, pasta, meat loaf, and made from scratch pancakes. You go Dave!