A Well-Stocked Pantry Bring Soups and Stews to Life
We’re stuck in the middle of winter right now, and we’ve embraced the colder days by making more soups and stews. There is something fundamentally satisfactory about a bowl of soup or stew on a cold winter day. The steam wafts from the bowl and fresh baked biscuits or rolls deliver a yeasty complement as they absorb a pad of melted butter.
Like most people, we enjoy the familiar – chicken or vegetable soup. Both offer timeless comfort, and they remind me of my childhood when I came inside from shoveling snow. But, we’re not all about nostalgia. Often, my wife and I will make some changes to the recipe by adding different herbs depending on what is available. Sometimes we add basil and other times Italian seasoning to the vegetable soup while rosemary adds a nice flavor to chicken soup.
Our new favorite this year has been Slow-Cooker Chicken Tortellini Tomato Soup. Here’s the recipe we’ve been using:
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020481-slow-cooker-chicken-tortellini-tomato-soup
We put the ingredients in a crock pot before we leave for work, and we are greeted with a hearty, rich meal when we return. We throw a couple frozen rolls in the oven for about ten minutes, and dinner is served! Our kids like it too!
But let’s not stop there. We have been traveling the world with stews! We did a bit of research to find nearly every part of the world has beef and chicken stews. We thought we’d venture out, but nothing has come close to our new favorite which came by way of a dinner at a friend’s house.
Octavio and his wife Michelle invited us over and introduced us to Pozole, a delicious Mexican stew that is easy to prepare. While either one wouldn’t give up the family recipe, I managed to find one that is almost as delicious!
https://www.food.com/recipe/authentic-mexican-pozole-196233
What seems like a lot of ingredients was minimized by having the pantry fully stocked. The one secret Octavio gave me was to sprinkle a little crushed red pepper over the top to bring that little burst of heat.
Heat that tells you spring is right around the corner.