Soups are ideal comfort food to add to the menu during the winter months

With the arrival of the winter months, it’s the perfect time of year to add more comfort meals to the menu – hot desserts, slow cooked mains and of course soups, which are being reinvented by creative chefs and presented as complete meals, increasingly with lots of chunky inclusions. To find out more about the growth of the category we spoke to three of our consultant chefs.

“What we’re seeing in the pub space right now when it comes to soups is a lot more creativity,” confirms ALH Group National Executive Chef Gary Johnson. “They’re not just for the seniors or for lunches, they’re a full, comforting meal during those chillier months, with recipes and presentation styles evolving accordingly. A Moroccan Harira soup with lentils, chickpeas and fresh baked sourdough on the side can be a complete meal – another one of my favourites is to rub some curry spices over pumpkin soup, add some green apple, a dob of yoghurt and fresh coriander, with a papadum on the side.  

Gary emphasises soups are no longer just a bowl of vegies but are far more substantial, and that presentation has become as important as taste. “You might serve a beautiful green pea soup topped with torn mint and grilled chorizo, or a zucchini soup with some hot smoked salmon and ricotta bruschetta topped with dried black olives. The colours really contrast and grab the customer’s attention and the ingredients work together to deliver a filling winter meal. I always say a good chicken soup is like balm for the soul!”

He says there also tends to be many more varieties of soup on the menu than in the past. “Gone are the days of cracking open a tin of chicken and sweetcorn – there’s a lot more we can do, and a lot more the customer expects. One of our very popular lunchtime menu meal combos is soup-salad-sandwich – which consists of a little bowl of soup, a warm salad on the side and a toastie. It appeals to all ages across most of our venues – I think people are looking for warm comfort food that’s healthy too, and those are the sorts of meals we try to supply. Another good example is roasted Mediterranean vegetable soup with some nice pulled lamb and a side of goat’s cheese crostini – we’ll add some barley to it to make it more satisfying, so it contains all the nutrients you need, including fibre which is filling as well.”

In planning menus with the chefs at ALH’s pubs, Gary says the focus is to create soups which not only have broad appeal but are also well-rounded, nourishing meals. “The trap all of us as consumers sometimes fall into in during the colder months is not have enough liquid, and soups are great solution to that because they provide that extra liquid along with plenty of nutrients.

“I think at this time of year people tend to avoid the heavy fried proteins that can weigh you down, and would often rather have a tasty soup with crusted bread on the side and a smaller serve of protein. If you go for around 50-80g of protein in a nice soup it’s ideally balanced. You can look at any nationality, any cuisine – all have their favourite traditional soups which have been passed down through the generations, and they’re the ones that everybody loves, so you can build on those recipes and try to add a contemporary twist.”

Throw the rulebook away

Chef Peter Wright echoes Gary’s words, emphasising “when it comes to soup, flavour is king” – “the worst thing is to offer a soup that’s bland, especially if it’s a big bowl, because the customer will be struggling to get through it. So if you offer 500ml of soup that’s just a puree or a liquid, they’ll get halfway through and it’s a bit like trying to get through half a dozen bananas. So it has to be enticing all the way through – there need to be chunks, particulates or inclusions that break up the textural homogeneity of eating, that give you some textural variation.

“Soup has become an entire meal and it’s great to offer a thick chowder, or a soup enriched with noodles or rice – from old school European soups such as minestrone enriched with pasta, to an Asian laksa which contains vermicelli, or a ramen made with thick egg noodles or soba noodles. These are highly fillings yet still very economical to add to the menu, and you can sell them at a pricepoint which is appealing to customers. Even a sandwich bar lunch can cost anywhere between $12 to $15, so if you sell a bowl of soup for $10 at lunch and you offer a really hearty beef chowder, a thick minestrone or a delicious ramen, then it’s going to have broad appeal.”

Peter also recommends getting creative with your soup recipes and “throwing the rulebook away”: “At their core soups are bowls of liquid with inclusions, so ask yourself what can you put in that liquid to turn it into a filling meal that’s going to taste great? Then what are you going to serve it with – it could be  a little cob of corn dusted with butter and paprika, wrapped in foil and cooked in the oven, or a garlic bread or brioche bun. You could even be smart and serve it with apple or banana as a combo lunch. The important thing is that the customer leaves feeling they’ve had a decent feed.”

Season well from start to finish

George Diamond, Group Executive Chef at Trippas White, says “The important thing with soups is to make sure your ingredients are well seasoned from start to finish. For example, when you’re making a cauliflower soup, you want to slow-cook the cauliflower at the beginning, season it up, develop those flavours right through the dish until the end of the cooking process.

“There’s nothing better than a soup on a cold winter weekend; I personally make one every week at home. And they’re not only inexpensive, they’re easy to prepare even in a busy kitchen because you can make them in batches of five or ten litres which you then freeze until needed. And while you need to make sure you’re using good quality ingredients, soups are also a good way to move some of your excess stock out of the fridge. Customers love them not only because of the warming aspects but because they offer health benefits – not only do they keep us hydrated during those winter months when we tend not to drink as much, they can also give our immune system a boost. A simple chicken soup can help keep the common cold at bay and keep you loaded up, especially if it contains garlic, celery and so on. It’s also very soothing if you have a sore throat.

George’s favourite soup is one drawn from his Greek heritage. “Avgolemono is basically a Greek lemon chicken soup, and if you ever get to try it, you’ll find it’s one of the most amazing soups you’ve ever had. It’s basically a peasant dish which was made by people who didn’t have a lot of money – they would grab a chicken, poach it in some vegetables for a couple of hours, then strain the broth, reduce it down, add a little rice to thicken it, then boil some potatoes in the soup, whisk some whole eggs with fresh lemon, grated tomatoes and black pepper and pour that back in, and it enriches the soup with those flavours. Then at the end you shred the chicken, put it back in and it all tastes great!”

Soup mixes as a base upon which the chef can build

With labour and prep time in short supply for many foodservice businesses, major supplier Unilever Food Solutions offers an extensive range of dried soup mixes under its Continental brand which are ideal to use as bases upon which the chef can build. As Unilever Food Solutions Corporate Executive Chef Andrew Ballard explains, “Instead of having to make all your different soups from scratch, you can save on time and labour by using Continental soup mixes as a base, then finish with your own ingredients. There are 13 varieties in the range and they’re very popular when you need to produce soup in volume, such as in health and aged care and the convenience market.

The recipes are all based on traditional favourites and about four years ago were reformulated to make them all gluten free with no added MSG and ensure they’re bain marie stable and cook-chill stable. The latest addition to the range is Cream of Cauliflower which Andrew describes as an “on-trend flavour”.

The minimal prep required is a big selling point: “You can use them just as they are, or you can enhance with additional ingredients – for example, with Cream of Cauliflower you just add water and a little cream, but you could also garnish with some additional fresh cauliflower to finish it off. The margins are very strong on these – you can have them sitting in a bain marie in a small café or at a service station, and that aroma is going to bring the customers in.”

The mixes are also versatile enough to be used as a base for other applications, as Andrew suggests: “You can thicken up our pumpkin soup mix and use it as a pasta sauce, or use the cauliflower mix to make a cauliflower and potato mash – these products make it easier to think outside the box. We’ve created some innovative recipe suggestions for them which you can find on the Unilever Food Solutions website. At the end of the day it’s all about saving on labour and prep – even if you’re adding fresh ingredients, you’re still going to have the soup done in 10 to 15 minutes. You don’t need to be a skilled chef to use these products and they are formulated with quality ingredients.” 

You can download 13 inspiring homestyle soup recipes from Continental here