Damn, that's Good! Wild Rice & Mushroom Soup

Occasionally I strike out.  I made something the other night that Tony so over-salted.  I got the message.

Tonight, on the other hand, home run.

Wow. What's with all these sports metaphors? That's so not me.

Anyway, back to my home run.  Or really, back as far as Passover.  I got this idea that I would make some mushroom matzah kugel for Seder.  So I bought a couple of trays of crimini mushrooms.  But my friend Sharon offered to bring this winner of a sweet potato dish, and I realized I could drop back one dish.  I'm an ambitious hostess, but I know a gift when I see one.  At that last moment, having one less thing to prepare is a blessing.  Thank you, Sharon!

Passover was a bit ago already, but I still have a couple of gallons of turkey broth, and two packages of mushrooms.  Perfect storm for Wild Rice & Mushroom Soup.  This is the easiest soup ever, hearty and delicious.  And demonstrates the value of having frozen broth on hand.  If you don't have broth, click this sentence for my fast and easy Vegetable Bin Broth recipe.

Wild Rice & Onion Mushroom Soup

2 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, sliced thin
1 container of mushrooms (about 8 oz), sliced
8 cups or so of turkey, chicken, beef or vegetable broth
1/2 cup of uncooked wild rice (or, use quinoa, barley, beans or lentils)
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat two tablespoons of olive oil in a large, deep saute pan.  Add sliced onions to hot oil, and turn the heat down to medium low.  Push the onions around so they all get coated in oil, and then stir occasionally.  Saute until onions become translucent, and then caramelize.  To caramelize the onions, you simply cook them over medium to low heat long enough for them to brown, stirring occasionally so they don't stick and burn.  If they seem to be sticking, just turn the heat down and stir more frequently.  This process takes about thirty minutes.  If you want a fuller explanation about caramelizing onions with lots of pictures, click this sentence to be whisked to one of my favorite recipe blogs, Simply Recipes.

Once the onions are how you like them - or if you've never done this before, a warm brown color, push the onions to the side of the pan to make room for the sliced mushrooms. Toss them in, and push them around every few minutes, for about ten minutes, until they are well sauteed, but still firm.  Set the onions and mushrooms aside.

You can see carrots in my soup.  These were already in the
turkey broth, but aren't necessary.

In a pot, pour the broth and add the wild rice.  Heat to barely boiling, then lower the heat and simmer gently for thirty minutes, until the rice is al dente.  If you're using something other than wild rice, adjust the time accordingly.  Lentils, for example, usually take longer than 30 minutes.  

When the rice is ready to eat, simply stir in the onions and mushrooms, and let them heat in the broth for a couple of minutes.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Ready to serve.

Before we say goodbye so you can go make this simple and beautiful soup, I feel the need to make mention of my suggested substitutes for wild rice.  Not everybody has wild rice in the house all the time.  You could, I suppose, substitute regular white rice for this dish.  It's not as hearty and the flavor is different, but it would work pretty well.  You could substitute pasta.  Almost everyone has regular rice and some sort of pasta sitting around the cupboard.  But I specifically did not recommend those things because they are high on the glycemic index, and low on nutritional value.

They are the comfort foods of your childhood, but if you don't give them up or at least reduce their incidence in your diet significantly, they will be the bain of your old age.

But don't take my word for it.  If you don't understand glycemic index, read what Harvard says about it by clicking this sentence.  To see Harvard's food chart listing glycemic index of 100 foods, click this sentence.

Was that easy or what?

Vegetable Bin Broth

Fridge clean-out day.  I didn't plan it that way, but when I opened the bin this morning, so many melancholy veggies looked up at me with those big, sad eyes.  I knew it would be Vegetable Bin Broth day.  Vegetable Bin Broth is the perfect antidote for pouting veggies.  Almost anything that is so far gone you wouldn't buy it from the market, but not actually rotten can be put into the pot to create a delicious, healthy soup base.  Use it now, or freeze it for later.  

Here's the recipe.  Don't despair that my measurements are not exact.  You really can't do any harm here as long as you have adequate water in the pot with the veggies.  Quantities depend on how many veggies you're trying to get rid of, and how big a pot you're using.  And you will notice I don't have you remove skins or leaves.  These add flavor, color and nutrition, and you'll strain them out later.  If you don't have a regular strainer, use your spaghetti strainer!

Vegetable Bin Broth

Nice to Have Ingredients:

You can make a nice soup with only the following ingredients.  But even if you don't have all of these, you can just use whatever you have.  Really!

An onion or two, quartered.  Don't even bother to remove the skin
Two or three cloves of garlic.  Leave their skins on too.
A couple of carrots cut into pieces

Pepper corns
A bit of salt
A couple of bay leaves or a sprout of thyme or parsley 

Optional ingredients

Whatever uncooked, limp but un-dead vegetables in your fridge. Celery, root vegetables, peppers, past-prime (but never sour tasting) tomatoes, parsley or other herbs, broccoli, brussel  sprouts, squash, mushrooms.  Anything, really.  The only vegetables I strongly advise against are cucumber and particularly starchy vegetables like potatoes.  Trim off bad spots and stems, but use the leafy tops.

This soup is perfect for vegetarians and vegans, but if you are a meat-eater and want to  toss in a couple of chicken quarters or beef bones, feel free.  But don't feel you have to.  A purely vegetable stock is a lighter concoction with a more delicate flavor, and you'll find lots of uses for it.   Some of my favorites:  as a base for Asian soup recipes, a flavorful broth for steaming or poaching fish, or a substitute for water when simmering rice, lentils or beans.   

Preparation

Toss whatever you've got into your pot, and add water to just cover the vegetables.  Now however high the water comes in the pot, add more water till it's double.  Bring to a boil and then quickly reduce the heat and simmer until the onions are translucent and the carrots have exchanged their vibrant orange for a muted rust color.  The process could take anywhere between twenty minutes and an hour, depending on how much stuff you've got in your pot.  

By the way, if you get involved in something else and forget your soup, and when you return, there's hardly any soup in the pot, do not despair.  Unless you've let it go so long that the veggies are scorched and stuck to the bottom of the pot, just add water back to reconstitute the very concentrated broth that's left.  It will be fine.  If it is scorched, you'll have to toss.  Scorched veggies leave an acrid taste in the broth.  Yuck.  If you're like me, and prone to time lapses where you look up at the clock and entire half days have gone by, consider setting a timer that goes off loudly.

To know when you're done, use your eyes.  When the colors are dull, the broth is ready.  Don't worry about how your veggies look - you're not serving them.  You're getting rid of those veggie carcasses as soon as they transfer their healthy goodness into the pot.  If they're still bright and colorful, then their value is still in the vegetable and not yet in your broth.  

Once your broth is ready for you, use a strainer placed over another pot to separate the vegetables from the broth.  Let the broth cool and refrigerate it.  Reheat your broth for soup tonight, adding some cut up veggies, rice, or lentils before serving, or you can freeze it for later use.  

I don't want to guilt you, but consider tossing your spent veggies into a composter.  They are still good for enriching your garden soil.  I seriously recommend clicking here to see this little composter guy.  It fits right under your counter so you don't have to run your scraps outside.  It is air tight, surprisingly doesn't smell at all, and turns out some really great compost, as well as compost "tea" for your house plants.  By the way, compost tea needs to be seriously diluted before using.

Once you've gotten into the habit of creating delicious stock from your vegetable bin, you will swear off bullion cubes forever.

Bon appetite!