What We’re Making This Week: the soup-before-the-snow edition.
It’s still warm out, but we’re making soup anyway. NOAA’s outlook has most of the country east of the Rockies running warmer than normal into the second week of November. We don’t care. Five pots are going on the stove this week, and not one of them needs a slow cooker or a day off work.
On the menu this week
- Potsticker soup with ginger, sesame and chili oil (25 minutes, serves 4)
- Beef and sausage lasagna soup, ricotta on top (55 minutes, serves 8)
- Chipotle albondigas with rice-and-mint beef meatballs (70 minutes, serves 6)
- Shredded chicken and orzo soup with two lemons (50 minutes, serves 6)
- Sirloin steak and potato soup with Dijon cream (40 minutes, serves 6)
- One shopping list for all five
Potsticker soup with ginger, sesame and chili oil
Fastest bowl here: 25 minutes, freezer to table.
This is the one for the night you walk in at 6:40 and everyone is already asking. The broth is chicken stock with soy, rice vinegar, sesame oil, garlic and fresh ginger, with carrots and spinach wilted in at the end.
The potstickers never go in the pot. You cook them by the package directions, set a few in each bowl, and ladle the hot broth over the top. They keep their bite, and any broth you save for tomorrow stays broth. Chili oil goes on at the table, so the people who want heat can have it.
Get the potsticker soup recipe
Beef and sausage lasagna soup, ricotta on top
Every lasagna layer, zero layering.
A pound of ground beef and half a pound of Italian sausage brown together first, then onion and bell pepper go in to finish in the fat. Tomato paste and a spoon of chicken bouillon paste cook for a full minute before any liquid hits the pot, and that minute is where the depth comes from.
Nine lasagna noodles get snapped into one or two inch pieces and simmered right in the marinara and beef broth. Stir them often or they glue themselves to the bottom. The ricotta, Parmesan and basil get stirred together in a separate bowl and spooned on top, so every bite still gets the cheesy layer. It serves eight.
Chipotle albondigas with rice-and-mint beef meatballs
The meatballs cook their own rice.
Uncooked long grain rice goes straight into the meatball mix with 80/20 ground beef, an egg, cilantro and fresh mint. As the meatballs simmer in the broth for 15 to 20 minutes, the rice cooks inside them. Nobody has to make a side.
Two chipotles in adobo make the broth smoky without making it a dare. Potatoes go in first. The zucchini waits until the last five to seven minutes so it still has some snap when it lands in the bowl. Squeeze the lime wedges hard.
Shredded chicken and orzo soup with two lemons
Brightest bowl here: two lemons, no cream.
After the lasagna soup and the steak soup, somebody at your table will want a bowl that tastes like it was made with the windows open. This is it. Chicken gets seared, then simmered in the broth until it hits 165°F, then shredded with two forks and stirred back in.
The orzo boils in its own pot and gets spooned into each bowl before the soup goes over it. That’s the second soup here that keeps the starch out. A quarter cup of lemon juice and a lemon’s worth of zest go in at the very end, so the brightness doesn’t cook off.
Get the lemon chicken orzo soup recipe
Sirloin steak and potato soup with Dijon cream
Steak sauce goes in the pot, not on the plate.
A steakhouse dinner, if the steakhouse served it in a bowl. Half-inch pieces of top sirloin get a hard sear in the Dutch oven and come right back out. The mushrooms cook until their water is gone and they start to brown, then flour, then beef stock whisked in one cup at a time so nothing clumps.
Cream, a spicy Dijon and two teaspoons of steak sauce finish it. The seared beef goes into the bowls first and the soup gets ladled over it, so the sirloin never sits in a simmer long enough to turn into shoe leather.
Get the steak and potato soup recipe
Save all five and shop the list
Every recipe from this week is below. Save the collection to your own recipe box, then pull up one shopping list built from all five recipe cards.
Save this Recipe
Enter your email address to send this right to your inbox.
