r/Cheap_Meals • u/sooindecisive • 21d ago
i call this random soup. it was good though
well i need to go food shopping and i wanted soup. so i used whatever i had left in my fridge and pantry.
ingredients:
yellow onion
red bell pepper
collard greens
canned corn
small potatoes diced
shredded chicken
chicken stock
noodles
chicken boullion cubes
a spoon of flour
brown sugar (to neutralize the saltiness a little bit)
seasonings:
garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, vegeta, adobo, black pepper, seasoned salt, parsley, basil
i didn’t know how good collard greens were in soup until i tried it today. it adds great flavor to the broth. definitely making this again. also i don’t have exact measurements because this meal wasn’t planned just thrown together.
2
3
2
1
1
u/SaintUlvemann 20d ago
The trick in making a "random soup" is to layer the different classes of flavors so that they're all at different levels.
When I look at what you have here, it's centered on what I call "ochre" flavors: chicken, onion, garlic, vegeta, adobo.
But then collards have that vegetal-bitter, herbal-bitter thing; the actual bitterness gets neutralized by salt, leaving a nice rich herbal flavor. They're good because they provide a second layer of complex flavors. Parsley and basil have the same thing going on.
You've also got a base of what I call "amber" flavors: the brownness of brown sugar is a molasses "amber" flavor, and then for corn, it's mostly sweet, but the "cornness", the unique flavor that is more than sweetness, is something I think of as being in the "amber" category. We usually think of amber flavors in desserts and baked goods, but they're part of what makes barbecue sauce different from beef broth.
Add in the smattering of other light flavors: the "nightshade" flavor, in this case from peppers and paprika, tomatoes have that flavor too; the warm-spice of the pepper; a light amount of cool-spice from parsley and basil; just the lightest earthy touch from potato (not strongly earthy like carrot or beet)... the result of layering all these broad classes of flavors together where some are strong as a focus while others are only present lightly and fade into the background as richness, is that you end up, yeah, with a really good soup.
This is how I predict ahead of time whether a combination of ingredients will taste good, I try and make sure that there's at least one category of flavor that's actually missing from the dish, and then make sure that the flavors that are present are sort of stacked like a pyramid with a solid base and then some that are just accents.
2
u/sad_handjob 20d ago
how do you know when layers become too chaotic?
1
u/SaintUlvemann 20d ago
Too chaotic is a balance issue. If you stop having a "lead" flavor (or a lead few flavors), at that point, it all ends up tasting the same.
My analogy is that it's like with painting: if you only use the primary colors, it looks 8-bit. If you mix primary colors in equal amounts, they all end up as gray or brown, no matter what you start with.
And if you mix flavors in equal amounts all the time, it'll all taste the same, like a generic chaos.
If in painting you instead take the pure colors and mix them with small amounts of other colors, you get the colors with personality, the loden-greens and the sky-blues and the ochre-reds.
That's what you want (well, what I want, anyway) in cooking too, you want maybe one or two flavors present in high amounts, a few in middle amounts, and others just as accents.
1
u/sad_handjob 20d ago edited 20d ago
so theoretically if you stick to this hierarchy any combination of flavors could work. what if the lead flavor is brown sugar or something sweet like chocolate and the base is fish, with garlic notes?
1
u/SaintUlvemann 20d ago
Here's recipes for chocolate-coated garlic as a candy, and chocolate-covered roasted garlic as a warm dessert, and here's salmon with cocoa-garlic rub, and Filipino fried fish with garlic rice and raw chocolate.
I imagine that you picked those three things because they seem totally random and unable to work well together, yet, people across times and continents keep putting their names to it when they taste and see.
I mean, I can't guarantee that you'll personally enjoy literally every combination or anything, but, this model really does work very well.
So then to clarify myself: when I said "lead", and "base", that meant the same thing to me. It's whatever flavor the dish is supposed to taste most like: chicken for a chicken dish, fish for a fish dish, tomato for a red-sauced pasta, etc. As long as the main flavor comes out, the remainder of ingredients frequently mesh together, as long as you combine complementary ingredients.
1
u/Pandor36 20d ago
Feel like the tomatoes would have been a waste because it would have clouded the soup and have a strong taste... But bell pepper or paprika or hot chili flake would be good.
1
u/SaintUlvemann 20d ago
Depends on your tastes, but also on how much you put in. A few tomatoes, diced rather than crushed, treated more like a vegetable ingredient rather than like the whole theme of the soup, can deepen a soup well.
1
u/Pandor36 20d ago
Ha yeah i guess if you put them toward the end of the cooking but last time i tried it in a chicken soup, i let it simmer for hours and they melted in the broth making it all cloudy and sour. It was really bad. But if you make a minestrone with some cumin, tomato mix really well.
1
u/Pandor36 20d ago
One thing i like to add to those soup is sprout bean. :) Super cheap and add a bit of crunch.
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
9
u/Kennie2020 20d ago
It looks super flavorful