Emma Miller
Broth is a versatile dish that can decorate any table and save even the worst dinner. The cooking broth is easy enough, the main thing is to know the basic rules.
The ability to cook delicious clear broth is a matter of pride for any housewife. However, not everyone’s broth turns out really tasty. As chefs say, for a good broth it is not enough to buy quality ingredients, it is equally important to know some nuances.
Why is the broth not working?
Sometimes, despite the fact that the ingredients we have added to the soup are healthy, the dish does not turn out tasty. The reason for this is the wrong addition of salt to the dish. The fact is that broth should not be salted during cooking, and even more, so you should not add salt to cold water. The salt added early prevents the vegetables and spices from fully giving their flavor and aroma. That is why the broth should be salted a few minutes before turning off the stove so that later you do not try to understand why the broth does not taste good.
Also, the broth may not work if you use not fresh meat or fish. In this case, the broth will not only be tasteless but also with an unpleasant specific smell, which even spices will not be able to interrupt.
Another important point, ignorance of which can ruin your dish – as soon as the water boils, in which you have the ingredients for the broth, it must be drained. Rinse all the ingredients, return them to the pot, and now start boiling the broth. You should not cook the broth on the first water, as the such broth will never be transparent.
What to do if there is a lot of water in the soup
If you don’t know how to fix a soup that isn’t boiling, turn on your imagination, and don’t be afraid to experiment. To begin with, too-liquid soup can be thickened. If you discovered the problem at the beginning of cooking, you can simply increase the number of ingredients by adding a little more vegetables to the soup.
Keep in mind, however, that this option will only work if you have just started cooking the soup. If the dish is almost ready, you should not add more raw vegetables to it. In this case, you can thicken the soup with starch. Depending on the volume of your pot dilute a few tablespoons of starch with cold water and pour it in a thin stream into the boiling soup. The soup will become much thicker and take on the consistency of cream.
You can also mashed potato too thin soup with a blender to puree it, bring it to a boil again, and thicken it with starch. In this case, you will get a soup puree. Add to such a soup a little cream, heavy sour cream, or a piece of butter and the dish will acquire a delicate creamy taste.
Why torch vegetables for the broth
Vegetables are torched, i.e., trailed fried in a dry frying pan or baked in the oven if you plan to use them to make vegetable broth. Professional chefs argue that only torched or baked vegetables can fully reveal their flavor and give a rich flavor to the broth.
A broth cooked with roasted vegetables will be much more flavorful, brighter, and tastier than one cooked with fresh vegetables.
Why can’t the soup be as flavorful as it could be?
Your soup will be unleavened if you cook it in a bad broth. Also keep in mind that it’s not just the spices and herbs that give the soup its flavor, but also the fats. Don’t try to make a tasty soup with lean meat. The dish will turn out dietary, but frankly not tasty.
Use fatty meat or meat on the bone in the broth so that the soup will not be boring.
The vegetables you send into the pot lightly stew in a pan with the addition of a little butter.
Finally and most importantly – salt the soup only before the end of cooking
How to fix a bad soup
If you don’t like your soup and you don’t know how to make it taste better, don’t worry. Even a soup that doesn’t taste good can be fixed.
You can improve the taste of the soup with spices. Also note that in soups with tomato paste or tomatoes, you need to add not only salt but also sugar. It is the combination of salt and sugar that will help the spices to fully unfold.
You can also add additional ingredients to the soup. For example, smoked sausages cut into rings will give the soup a nice flavor and aroma and significantly improve the taste of the dish. Melted cheese will make your soup creamy. You can also add heavy cream to the soup.
A little bit of heavy sour cream will significantly improve the taste of the soup.
You can also make an extra batch of onions and carrots, but cook it preferably in butter. Add such a “topping” to the soup and it will be much tastier.
If you get a sweet soup correct the situation with spices. Usually, many hostesses face such a problem when cooking vegetable soups and do not understand why the soup is sweet. The fact is that vegetables such as bell peppers, carrots and beets have natural sugars. Depending on the variety of vegetable, the sugar content can be quite high. Also, adding some sauces requires extra caution because they use sugar in their preparation.
If you are sensitive to sugar, the soup may indeed seem sweet to you.
How to fix a soup that is too rich
If your soup looks more like porridge, there’s only one solution: add water. There is no consensus on this, as some chefs argue that thick soups can be diluted with water, the main thing is to add boiling water to the boiling soup and bring the dish to a boil. Others argue that in this case, the taste of the dish will suffer because the added water will reduce the concentration of broth and spices.
It is certainly up to you to decide what you prefer – a soup with a bright taste, but reminiscent of porridge, or a more liquid dish, but with a less pronounced taste.
