At its most basic, soup is a pot of vegetables and meat boiled until cooked tender. At its best soup is a distilled essence of its ingredients, and it can be a transformative experience to sup on a bowl of fine soup.
Preparing soup is simple. No soup ever requires more than one pot. Discard any recipe for soup that require more than one pot or pan. So many dirty pots violates the basic ethic of soup.
A soup pot must be well made, of heavy gauge copper or aluminum, and lined with tin or stainless steel. Anodized aluminum works well for all but the most acid soups.
Be sure the bottom and walls of the pot are thick, and that the pot feels heavy and clumsy to move. Soup is made on the back burner and the pot doesn�t need to be moved once the soup is underway.
A good soup pot is expensive. The best place to find a bargain on a serious soup pot is in used restaurant equipment shops. No good soup ever came from an inferior pot.
On the other hand, soup is the place to skimp on ingredients.
Soup is the last refuge of inferior ingredients. A good soup might demand a fine and elegant garnish, but no one in their right mind ever made soup from caviar or center cut beef loin steaks.
Soup is what happens to vegetables trimmed of the rotting spots, to chicken carcasses and butcher�s scraps. Soup is what becomes of leftovers and discards. Nothing is more difficult to do in a kitchen than to turn such flotsam into a bowl of fine soup.
Island Chowder
Winter squash soup with red chile cream