The Soup Project: 50 soups and 10 things I learned from making them

The 2011 Soup Project has come to an end.

I'd started the Soup Project partly to save our food budget and partly to see if it could be done. Sure books of soup recipes exist, but every one of them depends on meat, poultry or fish soup stocks and soups for variety. I wondered if I'd hit a wall doing all vegan soups (some had a bit of cheese for garnish) but it turned out, I didn't hit a wall, I could have kept going.

As I look back over my year of soups, I figured the best post for today would be a wrap up of all the things I learned about soup making this year.

Here are ten things I learned from making soup this past year:

1. It's incredibly easy to make soup. Homemade soup doesn't even even require a cookbook, just ideas jotted down from recipes that catch your eye. Anyone can create soup, just let your imagination go.

2. Mind the season. Make asparagus soup in the spring, fruit soups in the summer, and kale, potato and carrot soup in the winter.

3. Go with local choices because the flavors are better, you support local farms and doesn't it feel good to say this dinner came from a local farm.

4. Create layers of flavor with homemade stock. The prepackaged stock is usually loaded with sodium and will give your soup a "boxed" or "packaged" background flavor. If time is short, do a faux layer by adding carrots, celery, onion and parsley to the soup. Toss in a bay leaf. Sample as you cook. Before serving, ladle a cup of soup out and puree it. Return to the pot and season to taste with salt, pepper and add a bit of lemon juice to brighten the flavors.

5. Use a heavy soup pot, pressure cooker or crock pot. No need for special or expensive equipment, just the basics makes soup a great food budget meal. It really is a budget meal. Other things you might need include a colander for pasta and beans, measuring spoons and cups, a ladel and a few good knives.

6. Add less ingredients. I'd always thought if one carrot is good, two will be better. This is not always true with soup. It can become overcrowded and too many vegetables can be distracting. It takes practice to the perfect consistency for soup, but in the meantime it's all edible.

7. If you catch burned soup right away, carefully ladle the soup into another pot, avoid scraping the burned part. I've rescued many burned soups this way. FYI if you get a heavy soup pot, you won't have the "burned soup" problem very often.

8. Don't double hot peppers or salt in recipes. One folk remedy for too much salt in soup is to add a chunk of potato, bring the soup to a boil, then remove the potato.

9. Think of the bowl as a frame for your soup. The colors on our plates influence how we feel. I found most soups look best in black or white bowls. Red was a loser soup bowl color, and green or yellow didn't fare much better. Blue came in second to black and white. We instinctively eat with our eyes first so be aware of how your soup looks.

10. If the flavor is bland and you're near the end of cooking, consider the five flavors our taste buds experience--sweet, salty, sour, pungent, and spicey. Balancing these flavors isn't as tricky as it sounds. Often a squeeze of lemon, a dash of salt or a pinch of sugar is all the soup really needs.

Soup really is good for the food budget. (Except for the fruit soups of summer.) You can savor soup one day with warm crusty bread and the next day ladle leftovers over quinoa or rice another day.

Stay tuned for my new recipe project next Monday. I have a few ideas and my Assistant has more than a few. In the meantime, check out this collections of soups and take your pick.

The 2011 Soup Project

1. Sweet Potato and Kale Soup

2. Quinoa Chowder

3. Basic Soup Stock

4. Locro Guascho Argentino (white beans, sweet potatoes and hominy)

5. Deborah Madison's Rustic Lentil Soup

6. Black Bean Chili

7. Meyer Lemon, Leek, Mushroom and Potato Soup

8. Dilled Cabbage, Mushroom and Potato Soup

9. Jamaican Red Bean Soup with Lime and Coconut

10. Chickpea and Kale Soup with Bread Crumbs

11. Roasted Potato and Leek Soup with Cashew Cream and Broccoli Raab

12. Masoor Dal

13. Caldo Verde: Portuguese Kale Soup

14. Long Life Miso Soup

15. Creamy Curried Nettle Soup

16. Red Velvet Soup (with beets)

17. Mushroom Rhubarb Soup with Baby Collard Greens

18. Yellow Split Pea Dal

19. Garlic-Asparagus Soup with Smokey Blue Cheese

20. Rhubarb-Cherry Soup with Cashew Cream

21. Roasted Tomato Soup with Grilled Asparagus

22. Spring Vegetable Soup with Red Lentils

23. Spinach Soup with Cashew Cream and Morels

24. Creamy Broccoli and Arugula Soup with Caramelized Zucchini and Avocado

25. Coconut Strawberry Soup

26. English Pea Soup with Mint and Apricots

27. Zucchini Chowder with Fire Roasted Tomatoes Basil and Parmesan Cheese

28. Cooling Creamy Mint Infused Apricot Soup

29. Dilled Fresh Tomato and Quinoa Soup

30. Creamy Carrot with Fennel and Pecans

31. Corn Chowder with Basil, Eggplant and Fire-Cracker Goat Cheese

32. Raw Creamy Cucumber Soup

33. Grilled Red Pepper Chowder

34. Lentil Soup with Smoky Eggplant

35. Borscht

36. Creamy Celery and Split Pea Soup with Carrots

37. Hot Apple Soup

38. Tortilla Soup with Corn and Red Beans

39. Dairy-Free Fresh Tomato Soup

40. Curried Pumpkin Soup

41. Butternut Squash and Pear Soup with Red Currants

42. Autumn Harvest Soup

43. Minestrone

44. Mushroom and Arugula Soup with Ravioli

45. Enchilada Soup with Black Eyed Peas

46. "Creamy" Parsnip Soup

47. Old-Fashioned Navy Bean Soup

48. Winter Mushroom Soup with Lemon-Hazelnut Gremolata

49. Black Bean Chili with Hominy

50. No-Turkey Noodle Soup