Those who keep gardens know that, for the most part, greens are the first item to come up in abundance. For my garden, that means fall-planted kale and Swiss chard, second-year parsley, watercress, sorrel, chives, and garlic chives. That's a lot of greenness. When I have so much green that needs eating, I have a basic soup that I like to make -- Cream of Green. It doesn't really matter if the green is kale, chard, spinach, broccoli, or any of the spring herbs. They all make a delicious soup.
This week, I made a cream of kale, chard, chives, and immature garlic (greens and bulbs) soup. I used ham fat (from Easter's ham), 1/4 of a whole onion, 1 potato, chicken soup stock (simmered the bones and skin from chicken leg quarters 2 weeks ago), whey strained off of homemade yogurt over a period of days, homemade plain yogurt, milk, salt, and flour plus water to thicken.
To make this batch, I cooked the onion in the ham fat, then added the chicken stock and the peeled and cubed potato, then cooked until the potato was tender. Next, I added the greens and herbs, rough-chopped, and simmered about 15 minutes. I pureed the mixture with an immersion blender and then added the whey, milk, and yogurt. Once the soup was smooth, I seasoned with salt and thickened with a slurry of flour and water.
The family agreed -- this soup was delicious. It was also extremely frugal. I used greens and herbs from the garden. The only purchased ingredients were the potato, 1/4 onion, salt, flour, and milk. I also used several scratch-made ingredients, including the yogurt (and resulting whey), the chicken stock, and the rendered ham fat. The bonus is that a soup like this uses items that might have otherwise been thrown away, such as the fat, the bones and skins to make the stock, and the whey which was drained off of the yogurt.
In addition to using spring greens from one's garden, a cream of green soup is also an excellent way to use aging and wilting purchased green produce. Leafy greens like kale, beet greens, and chard are pricy in the supermarket and have a short shelf-life. They wilt quickly and become much less appealing. In soup-making, any wilting is completely obscured.
Although its spring, it's still soup weather where I live. Nights are cold and evenings are chilly. Soup is warming in this shoulder season. As a result, soups are still featured on our family's menus until the end June.
Cream of green soup is just one frugal soup choice. Do you have any favorite frugal soups using garden produce or inexpensive purchased ingredients? Or soups that use items that most people tend to throw away, such as the green leaves on radishes? I'm looking for new ideas. URLs and suggestions are most welcome in the comments' section!
